For this blog post, I not only got to interview one of my favourite illustrators, I also got to meet up with him in person!
It was a warm, sunny Spring day. The mayflies were out in full force. There were burgers, and coffee, and a river with friendly boating people floating past. For what more could one ask?

Good times.

Anyway, I didn’t interview him then - I sent him the questions later. (I couldn’t trust myself to remember his answers, and I didn’t want to have to listen to my voice in a recording.)

So here it is! (Bold type: that’s me. Normal type: that’s AL. J.

Let’s start with a little introduction. Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Anthony Lloyd Jones but please call me Lloyd – that’s what everyone calls me. I make picture books sometimes. I used to make comics and want to get back into it someday.

I’m sorry, I decided after our meet-up, that I am going to call you AL. J. You may not like that… but you’re stuck with it now.

Quick Fire Round:

Would you say you're more introverted or extroverted?
Definitely introverted. I prefer to communicate through pictures and from a distance as much as is possible.

Good thing I made you meet up with me in real life then. I’m such a considerate friend.
Are you more messy or tidy?
Definitely messy. I need a bit of chaos. It helps me get into a playful state I find really fuels my creative endeavours.

Early mornings or late nights – which do you prefer?
Takes me a little while to get into my creative flow. I have had many a happy and exhausting time getting started on something late at night and not finishing until early the next day.

What would we find you doing on an average Friday night?
You probably won’t find me. I’ll probably be hiding at home with a video game. At the moment I am horribly addicted to Blue Prince.

**Do you have a self portrait you could share?**

Your Creative Adventure:

How did your art journey begin? And what eventually drew you to picture books?
I’ve always loved to draw. I was a very easy kid to buy presents for, I bet. Another couple of packs of felt tip pens and I was happy as Larry. There were more of my drawings strewn about the house than my poor parents knew what to do with.
I started making picture books at uni – in the second year of my two-year Master’s degree. I had deferred my second year after the first year was a bit of a non-starter. I had had what I thought was a solid premise for a year or two of study that ended up just not really coming together into anything. During the break I made some personal pieces in a medium somewhere between comic and adult picture book describing my experience with depression. It was about as candidly as I’d ever publicly talked about it. When I decided I was ready to go back to my studies I wanted to keep that ball rolling and thought learning how to make things for a younger audience would be an interesting challenge.

Coincidentally, my degree show artwork at university was inspired by my experience with depression. Only, rather than words and pictures, I created 3D, silver-plated sculptures. It produced some uncomfortable conversations…
Anyway, what was the best part of your master’s degree? And what would you say was your most useful takeaway from it?
The first year was a useful lesson. I painted myself into a corner I wouldn’t have gotten out of unless I’d taken that break. I didn’t buy into the sunk cost fallacy, was able to admit that I was stuck, and made a difficult but ultimately smart decision. And then I was able to have a much more productive and successful second year that got me a book deal. So that was cool.
Also, having never written for children before, I did a lot of research into education and developmental psychology and stuff. Really learned how to best communicate with children, and also how to approach making art with the same childlike joy and curiosity that got me into it in the first place all those years ago.

Speaking of books... what are a few you’ve illustrated so far? Do you have a favourite illustration from any of them?
I have a series of books with Jessica Kingsley Publishers, all about different mental health topics. The Princess and the Fog is about depression, The Nervous Knight is about anxiety, The Elf, The Princess and the Impossible Shoe is about perfectionism. I have a few favourites and it’s very hard to choose but the big establishing shot from the beginning of Impossible Shoe is up there.

**This makes my eyes incredibly happy.**

Your Style & Materials:

Let’s take a look through your sketchbook. What subjects or objects would we see the most? Why do you keep coming back to them?
I draw Sonic the Hedgehog a lot. Sometimes his friends too. Kind of a default warm-up doodle. I grew up drawing Sonic, it comes very naturally and is comforting. That’s the most common subject by an enormous margin.
Besides that, some common subjects are shoes, handwritten typography with deliberate misspellings, hamburgers, coffee cups, wine bottles, and very off-model Mario characters. I also like drawing outfits – either designing them for characters or doing little self-portraits in whatever I’m currently wearing.

What are your favourite art materials at the moment, and how do you like using them?
I most commonly use acrylic paint (I don’t care much about the brand), Derwent Inktense pencils, Caran D’Ache water-soluble crayons, Posca paint markers, Winsor & Newton Promarkers, interesting bits of paper I find, and a 15-year-old copy of Photoshop CS5.
The way I use them varies. I tend to start with only a vague black and white sketch of the page layout and figure the rest out as I go – try to really play in the space rather than follow too rigid a plan. Needless to say, making a huge mess is an essential part of this process.

Yum! I think making a huge mess is the best way to make something wonderful. (Like baking.)
Do you have a go-to colour to draw with? Or one you find yourself reaching for more often than you realise?
I probably overuse black. Maybe that’s my comics background showing through. A good solid outline in a black pen or pencil or crayon or something is often where it starts and ends. I made a conscious effort a little while ago to try to learn how to outline in other colours but I always come back to black eventually.

I’m similar in that I always come back to solid, coloured outlines even though I try hard to leave out the outlines and just have the colour make the shape… But I think that’s a good practice: allowing our natural inclination to inform our style, while still pushing ourselves to try things differently.

I happen to know your favourite colour is purple, but if you were a colour, would you be purple? Or something else?
I love purple but I don’t think I embody it well. I sort of wish I was more like purple, you know? It’s a very calm colour. It goes with the flow. It’s not stressed out about anything. I envy that about purple. I’m probably more of an… I don’t know. Orange?

The way you describe purple sounds a bit like me. I never realised I was purple.
My favourite colour is yellow - it’s bright and excited and the boss of the other colours - which does not describe me.

**Could you share an illustration of yours that made you really happy?**

This is fanart of a tumblr post. Someone posted a picture of a pet mouse that they’d scooped up in a little jar so they could clean its cage or something. I was very taken by the picture and wanted to try to do it justice.

Life & Living:

What do you appreciate about living in London? Are there any countryside perks you wish you had?

Honestly I don’t know. The cost of living seems a bit better, I suppose. But I’ve always been a town mouse. It’s easier to get around since I don’t drive, easier to meet people and find events to go to. I like to be surrounded by noise and people and, again, chaos. I don’t mind paying a bit extra for all that.

If you could go back and give your younger self some advice, just before starting your Masters, what would you say?

As tempting as it would be to warn myself that my idea for that first year project wasn’t going to go anywhere, I think I had to make that mistake, and spend the year after making things just for myself, in order to end up where I ended up. I try not to live a life of regret, as much as I can. Every mistake is a learning opportunity and I wouldn’t be who I am today without making many, many, many, many, many mistakes. 

Creative Motivation:

What would you say to someone who says, “I can’t draw”?

Everyone can draw! When most people say that they can’t draw, what they usually mean is that they don’t. Everyone knows that Practice Makes Perfect, but when it comes to artistic talent there’s this weird belief that it’s some magical inherent ability that you either have or don’t. It’s a lie! You just need to practice! Pick up a pencil and make something! Even if it’s not “perfect” “yet” it will be fun and it will be beautiful and it will be yours. 

What’s hardest for you to draw, or what do you dislike drawing?

I don’t particularly enjoy drawing “realistically” - I find it stifles creative energy. Obviously drawing from reference is important but I like to try to find a way to make each picture my own - exaggerating this detail, simplifying that detail, changing this colour, tweaking this bit, making this bit up, adding a joke, etc. I never measure perspective - I know how to, but I don’t wanna - I want to have more space to play and not worry about fitting everything into a specific set of rules. 

Yes! I agree wholeheartedly.

**Share a messy page of your sketchbook:**

I know it’s been a tough season for you creatively - would you like to talk a bit about that?

In spite of everything I’ve said so far I am currently experiencing the worst and most prolonged creative block of my entire life. I have had a few years of trying to move away from thinking of my illustration work as a business because I was finding it depressing. I had lost focus and I wanted to fall in love with it again. But then a few months ago something just broke and now there’s a real disconnect between my love of the thing and my ability to actually do the thing. I have ideas but it’s like my head and my hand just aren’t communicating anymore and I can’t get anything down on paper.

That is very sad and must be incredibly frustrating. But, if someone else said they’d lost their drawing mojo, what would you say to try help?

Can you come back to me? Honestly, I feel like if I had an answer to this, I’d try it on myself first. I’m in no position to help anyone else right now, as much as I would like to. I’m hoping that if I just lean into it a bit, try to enjoy the break, that it will reset the system and I’ll come back fresh eventually. That’s my current theory. Remains to be seen if it will actually pay off. 

I will be coming back to you on that, because this creative block will not last forever… She says confidently.

Inspiration & Influence:

Do you have any art or illustration heroes? Is there anything you’ve learned from them?

Absolutely. I have a few. Too many to fully list, but to name a few: Oliver Jeffers, Candy Jernigan, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott C., Bill Watterson
If I had to single one out: New York based fine artist Candy Jernigan taught me to look for the beauty in everything. Anything can be the inspiration for a work of art, you just need to look. There are things in life we’re taught to look away from because maybe they’re ugly, scary, dirty, dangerous, etc. but there’s always beauty there if you dare to defy society’s expectations, dig in and find it.

What is your muse - what inspires you most consistently?
I’m generally fascinated by people. I like finding pieces of paper ephemera that people have dropped - shopping lists, notes to self, receipts, an old letter you might find in a second hand book, someone’s holiday slides in an antique shop - anything that gives a glimpse into the mundane everyday life of someone I may never meet. Everyone’s got a unique story, their own stream of consciousness, their own dreams and objectives and things to do, their own life wholly separate from yours, and it feels very powerful to find a piece of someone else’s life so casually discarded and hold it in your hands and maybe glue it onto a piece of paper and paint on it and put it in a children’s book.

Also: Sonic The Hedgehog, apparently.

Is there a book that’s been especially helpful or inspiring in your creative life?
Understanding Comics and Making Comics by Scott McCloud have both really helped shape the way I think about not just comics, but all illustration and sequential art. The way that a still image can convey a feeling, or a sound, or the passage of time, or have multiple meanings or perspectives, all broken down into really easy to understand explanations. A very scientific approach to understanding art. 

I love Understanding Comics and recommend it to everyone (even if - or especially if - they care nothing for comics).

**Share an illustration where you learned something new:**

This was a commission from 2016 in which I I tried a new technique I’ve used many times since that I call “sketching out a picture on paper, filling the shapes where colour is going to be in black ink on separate pieces of paper, scanning it all, putting it all together in Photoshop, then colouring the black ink shapes and adding textures to them and drawing new line-art on top.”
I should come up with a catchier name for it.

The Internet:

Are you on any social media platforms? If so, do you enjoy creating content for them? If you could only keep one, which one would it be?
Social media and I have a… complicated relationship at the moment. I’ve been falling out of love with it for a while now. I post on Bluesky, Tumblr and Instagram sometimes.  

Bluesky is a bit like Twitter used to be, which can be fun even though I’ve not found a ton of “success” on there.

Tumblr is interesting in that it’s barely changed at all in 20 years and there’s a lot of hidden corners of niche interest and fandom still on there.

Instagram is Instagram. Not sure I have a favourite, but it’s definitely not Instagram.

Where can we find more of your work?
I have a website. Remember those? www.anthonylloydjones.com Social links are at the bottom. If I ever make any new work, that’s where you’ll find it.

I love your website - I can spend ages looking through it all, especially the Avetinja page.

Lastly, could you share something that no one likes to share: an illustration that you feel is unsuccessful or that makes you cringe?

As I said, I try to live a life without regret. I have a lot of fondness for even my least successful pieces because it would have meant something to me at the time. That said, the further back I go in my back catalogue, the harder that gets. Here’s a piece of fanart of the band Coheed and Cambria that appears to be from 2006 that I feel fairly embarrassed by. My practice has changed a lot and I no longer feel this represents me (although I do still listen to Coheed and Cambria.)

I had completely forgotten about them! I must listen to them again - it’s been ages.

Thank you for sharing that, and for all your candid answers. Is there anything you’d like to say in closing?

A.I. art is creatively bankrupt and will never teach you anything. Pick up a pencil and have fun. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes as you learn.

Nice.
Let’s end with one of my favourite images of yours . I love the variety of characters, and how each one has their own personality.

Find AL. J’s books at Jessica Kingsley Publishers, and make sure to spend ages looking through all the illustrations on his lovely website.

Interview with Anthony Lloyd Jones!