Shirley Hughes

Shirley Hughes is an award winning English author and Illustrator who over a 50 year career has sold over 11 million copies of her 50 published books whilst using her illustrative talents to design hundred more.

Above: An image from Hughes' award winning book "Dogger" (1977)

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Liverpool-born Hughes has received wide recognition for her work to literacy and for her brilliant children's stories and collections, perhaps most notably of which being her series "Alfie" (which ran from 1981 to 2001). This collection tells stories of the eponymous character as he faces simple adventures in his everyday life (for example making friends, cheering up peers etc). A very innocent and light-hearted series of books which have captured the insterests of young children for over 30 years.

I'm a huge fan of the type of illustrations that Shirley creates, I admire the fact that the drawings are quite rough yet still managing to appear realistic with her use of colour and tone. One thing I discovered that really interested me was the original rough drawings from the Alfie collection (pre-publication):

Original rough drawings of the "Alfie" book collection.