Anthony Browne picture gallery

This drawing of a pair of legs is fairly typical Browne, then and now. Unlike most pairs of legs, these have pirates hiding in their shoes and climbing up the “masts”. I had never heard of surrealism, but I have learned over the years that children are natural surrealists. To a child, a pair of legs has limitless possibilities; the socks and shoes are merely the least interesting starting point. Photograph: Anthony Browne

For nearly three years I worked in Manchester as a medical illustrator. I had to attend the operation and make a sketch of each surgical procedure. Later, in the studio, I converted the sketches into more detailed paintings. The surgeon would pause at various points throughout the operation to show me what he was doing and allow me to make a more detailed drawing. But it was almost impossible. In reality, an operation is a mess. Instruments, hands and blood get everywhere, obscuring all the details and casting a red veil of ambiguity over everything. One organ looks much like another in the vast casserole of the human body. Photographs were useless for educational purposes, which is why the university employed artists like me.
Photograph: The University of Manchester

For quite a few years I designed greeting cards for the Gordon Fraser Gallery. I got more designs printed than most artists because I learned to vary my styles. The company couldn’t afford to print too many cards that were obviously by the same artist, so I made sure that my designs were as different as possible. Here I thought it would be amusing to combine the worlds of rugby and ballet.
Photograph: Anthony Browne

In my version of Hansel and Gretel as the stepmother prepares to wake the children, we can see that her shadow on the wall behind her is extended by the gap in the curtains so that it appears as if she is wearing a pointed hat. As the stepmother formulates her despicable plan, the implied hat links and equates her with the witch whom the children encounter later in the story. If you look even more carefully, you can see this triangular motif is repeated several times within the picture: the shadow above the chest of drawers, the steeple of the church in the picture on the wall, the mouse hole in the skirting board and an ambiguous object on top of the wardrobe.
Photograph: Walker Books

When I painted this illustration of Willy the Wimp with his fellow bodybuilders, I wanted to get their anatomies and poses just right, so I went into my local newsagent to buy a bodybuilding magazine. The only one they had was on the top shelf along with the pornography. I could see that the cover featured an enormous couple in tiny swimming costumes. I was also shocked at its price: presumably the guiltiest of pleasures come at a cost. I grabbed the magazine and dashed to the counter. It seemed as if fifteen people or so instantly formed a queue behind me, anticipating my humiliation. Roll up, roll up! I wanted the experience to be over as quickly as possible, so I made sure I had exactly the right amount of money in my hand. I put the magazine on the counter. The lady at the till gasped and then bawled at me in astonishment, “Do you know how much this costs, love?” I smiled through the sweat and replied, “Yes, I know...But this is the one they said they wanted!”
Photograph: Walker Books

The origin of Changes was an image in my mind of a kettle turning into a cat: an object which is cold, hard, metallic and inanimate turning into something with completely the opposite properties. I painted this image first. It was a series of four pictures, each showing a different stage of the transformation, while the protagonist, Joseph, looks for clues to what is happening. I treated it as an extended version of the shape game. It was an excitingly new way of approaching a book. Without the limitations of a narrative, I could paint whatever I wanted: the pictures dictated the story. Like Joseph in the book, I walked around my house looking at things and imagining what they could change into.
Photograph: Walker Books

When I illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland the problem of “getting around” Tenniel was forever at the back of my mind. My concerns led to the employment of various tactics, intended to make my version as different as possible. For the illustration of the Mad Hatter, for example, instead of painting him to look mad in a wacky sense, I split his face down the middle. One half is arranged into a friendly smile; the other is dramatically down-turned in apparent misery. On the surface, and as far as my child readers are concerned, this just looks slightly peculiar, but on another level I was suggesting madness in a literal, psychiatric sense. It could be said that my hatter is truly mad, his duel emotions the result of chronic schizophrenia.
Photograph: Walker Books

Zoo features what might be considered the first overtly 'religious' illustration I ever painted. The gorilla’s head fills the entire page, and it is divided into four by the abstract bars that form the shape of a cross. As well as the implied deification of the gorilla, the design of the page makes it seem that the gorilla is trapped within the book itself.
Photograph: Random House

Nearly all of my books until Voices in the Park had been written in the third person, and for some time I had wanted to create a book that told the same story from the perspectives of two or more first person narrators. I wanted to show how the same event could be interpreted differently by different characters. In this picture we view Charles from behind, and the dark, ominous shape that seems to root his feet to the ground confirms that he walks literally in his mother’s shadow. The precise shape of her trilby corresponds with the overall neatness of the illustration, but, in the context of Charles’s oppression, it also has vague military connotations. Her dictatorship is confirmed by the repetition of the hat motif in virtually every object that Charles can see.
Photograph: Random House

In Little Beauty, I was so pleased with the expressiveness I had achieved in the dummy drawing of the gorilla carrying Beauty that I was reluctant to recreate it in a more thorough, less spontaneous, less joyous form. I have drawn hundreds of gorillas in my lifetime, and, although it was produced without any visual reference or attention to detail, this was one of the most gorilla-like gorillas I had ever drawn. I had simply concentrated on what it was I was trying to communicate; not whether the drawing was any good or not. Concerns about the quality of a picture can detract from the clarity of its communicative attributes, and in the absence of these concerns I had produced an image that said everything I needed to say. Moreover, the flowing quality of the drawing effectively illustrated the first real instance of movement in the book. Even the emotion of the characters seemed to be enhanced.
Photograph: Walker Books

Into the Forest is loosely based on Little Red Riding Hood but makes reference to many fairy tales. A boy’s fascination with fiction, coupled with the fact that the illustrations of the fairytale characters are drawn in pencil (whereas he is painted in watercolour), enshrouds the whole sequence of events in ambiguity. Are they real or just part of his imagination?
Photograph: Walker Books