Janine Dawson writes . . .
I’ve always drawn. I remember as a child that I really noticed a lot of things, a lot of little things that others seemed to skim past. The colour of things, the light...but mostly little idiosyncrasies and ordinary everyday things.
I’ve always loved characters, small, quiet ones and larger than life ones.
Although I was always drawing, I was never the “girl who was a really good drawer” at school, the ones who drew horses heads on everybody’s pencil cases. Still I just kept on drawing.
I drew my teachers. I drew everyone in my class. I drew people from old movies on the T.V. I drew people I saw in the street.
When I left school I worked backstage in theatre in Sydney and went to Art College for a few weeks before falling into animation where I spent the next 20 years doing what I loved best... drawing everyday. Through animation I worked in Los Angeles, Canada and Taiwan before eventually moving to Thailand to live and travel around S.E Asia for 7 years.
When I came back to Australia in 1991 with my daughter Rosie, I decided to change direction and start illustrating children’s books.
I love drawing late at night with the ringtails squeaking to one another in the tree outside my window. The air is clear and quiet and the world is blacked out except for the little pool of light around my desk which becomes my world...just me, the little insects batting about my light and the characters that come out of my pen and onto the page.
I love line drawing with a nib and black ink, watercolour and colour pencil.
When I go to schools it seems like nothing ever changes. I see the same characters there that I used to draw when I was at school...and I see kids, like me, just off to the side, quietly, who also just like to draw and I always hope that they will somehow be inspired to keep on drawing.
My first book was Mandy Made Me Do It for Blake, for Omnibus I have done Dog Tales and the Dulcie and Dud books, which I draw a lot from my own childhood. For Hodder I have been doing the Lily Quench books and this year will have my first picture book out for Scholastic Junkyard Dogs.
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