G is for Guinea Pigs #atoz2025 #booksky

Guinea pigs are possibly the most important things in my life. After all, I’m wholly responsible for their care and wellbeing. I’m continuing my A to Z Challenge illustration theme with some of my favourite sketches and illustrations.

The ten Princelings books and the two for younger readers, Messenger Misadventures and Cavies of Flexford Common all have illustrations. Most are chapter headings. Cavies is designed for younger readers (c 7 yrs old, Key Stage 1 in UK educational parlance). That has illustrations throughout.

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The A to Z is a blog hop, so do go to other people who are doing it. You can find the links here.

Guinea Pigs – where my heart lies

The first two were Fred and George. I doted on them, so much I thought I’d better share the love around a bit more. So Hugo and Victor (the First) came home in a snowstorm. And by the following summer I had written three stories starring them, just for fun.

Guinea pigs don’t live very long: four to seven years is the general view, although five to eight is also cited. But like any mammal, they can go earlier, or later. George went a month short of his fourth birthday, having suffered from misaligned teeth for nearly three years. Fred followed him six months later, largely because he missed his brother too much. Only Dylan and Dougall, also brothers, have been as devoted.

George

I only drew George for the first time this spring. The iPad helps me get the basic lines down, before playing with the drawing opportunities of the sketching programme. I use Tayasami Sketch, which has recently introduced an annual subscription. I decided it was worth £10 a year, especially compared with other costs.

After the first four came Humphrey and Hector. Humphrey is the star of Princelings book 5, and Hector is a miscreant in book 10. They are very true to their characters!

Dylan and Dougall came after Fred died, to keep Victor company. Dylan walked into my house and took over. It was like everyone agreed he was in charge – from the age of six weeks! Then Colman and Kevin arrived from Jersey. Colman was very cross about this, and bit me a lot. Eventually he decided I was all right, and was as loving as the others, but I’d already cast him as a villain in the books, and Kevin as his principal victim.

Oscar and Midge were the next pair to arrive, and fall out with each other. I was already well through writing the series by then, so they only got bit parts in the last two books. Percy managed to get the name of a lord of one of the important castles, and Biggles and Bertie got themselves strategic roles in book 10. Roscoe and Neville were the last to join the tribe before I finished the series, and picked up roles in the revolution. Then Ludo and Locksley arrived, to be named after characters who hadn’t got guinea pigs, and their characters were nothing like the fictional ones. And lastly, Pippin and Victor (the Red) arrived, ready named. Pippin had been a flyer from early days, named for somebody else’s guinea pig. And Victor… well, he was his own man and didn’t need a book.

The Illustrations

When I first published the Princelings series, animal protagonists were frowned upon, so I sort of turned them into boys. But they never changed in my head, and sometimes the illustrations reflected that. Humphrey drinking from a pool at the start of The Talent Seekers, Willoughby on his ‘fiddlesticks’ the mark of a Narrator, and a version of Dylan and Dougall leading Kevin across Rannoch Moor, bleak and driving rain. This was a revised version of the one in the book, one where I experimented with the iPad. It’s one of my favourites!

After a while I was encouraged to do a book for younger readers. Seven-year-olds need fully illustrated books, and I used the books by Michael Rosen as my guide. And I had an idea of Roscoe and Neville having adventures in the new home we’d moved into. This became The Cavies of Flexford Common.

I start by using pencil (Derwent Cassell HB or 2B) on paper. Then I use an inkpen over to create the line drawing (I have a set of three Pilot Drawing pens, nos 01, 03, and 05). After that, I usually erase the pencil. By book 9 I was doing all my illustrations on the iPad, and I could take a JPEG copy of a hand-drawn castle, and amend it, or change it about a bit, rather than start from scratch. More about that when we get to M.

I’m Jemima Pett, author, blogger, illustrator and guinea pig wrangler. My interests are in fantasy, environment, science (inc. fiction) and thrillers, to name a few things. This is my nth AtoZ Challenge. Mostly I talk about books. This time I’m talking about something I do without much thinking about… my illustrations.