Quentin Blake

Quentin Blake was born in the suburbs of London in 1932 and has drawn ever since he can remember.

He has always made his living as an illustrator, as well as teaching for over twenty years at the Royal College of Art, where he was head of the Illustration department from 1978 to 1986. His first drawings were published in Punch while he was 16 and still at school.

He is known for his collaboration with writers such as Michael Rosen and Roald Dahl. He has also illustrated classic books, both for children and adults.  

In the last 20 years he has made larger-scale work for hospitals and healthcare settings in the UK and France where his work can be seen in wards and public spaces, including a scheme for the whole of a new maternity hospital in Angers. 

His books have won numerous prizes and awards; including the Whitbread Award, the Kate Greenaway Medal, the Emil/Kurt Maschler Award and the international Bologna Ragazzi Prize. He won the 2002 Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration, the highest international recognition given to creators of children's books. In 2004 Quentin Blake was awarded the 'Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres' by the French Government for services to literature and in 2007 he was made Officier in the same order.

In Quentin's art - in his illustrations for other writers, his own books, his lonely travellers and his portraits - something is always happening, anarchic, unexpected, ridiculous, joyful, mischievous, poignant.  He is an artist with a powerful, often strange imagination who wants to make direct, living, vital, fresh contact with the real world. 

Information taken from the official website of Sir Quentin Blake

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