J is for Journeys #atoz2025 #booksky

Week 2 of the A to Z Challenge and I’m continuing the illustration theme, and featuring Journeys in my books. I’ll be coming back to this theme for R, too!

My 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.

Journeys by my characters

Most of the early journeys made by my characters are by wagons and stage coaches drawn by horses. As George’s inventions develop, so the methods of travel change, first by replacing horses with fuel cells that drive the wheels around, and then by flying machine, although that tends not to be for the masses – yet. And most of the journeying is still by foot. It means that most of my illustrations are of destinations, not of the journey itself.

When Dylan and Dougall rescue Prince Kevin from exile in an abandoned castle, all that changes. Here is a story in which the journey takes up most of the book. It means I had places to explore, but also the means of their transport to consider as subject for illustrations.

Here’s the one I immediately thought of as a Journey illustration. They are taking something in a wagon for delivery, as a favour to someone in return for help with their journey.

I surprised myself with this drawing. It was one of those you start in hope, without imagining you can actually do it justice, and then when you’ve finished you think… oh, it’s not bad! It was probably the first tree I’ve done (the RHS one) that didn’t look like a lollipop on a stick. Mind you, you’d hope that when I’m on the eighth book, with a conservative estimate of 20 new illustrations per book, I might actually improve.

The Illustrations

Here are a few more journeys, or at least some of the scenery for them.

The top left is a picture of Victor (the First) on his velocipede (a sort of bicycle) on a journey from 7H to Castle Dimerie. He’s to the north of Stonehenge! Middle is a sailing boat that is taking Mariusz away from what he feels is disaster at Laurel-Eye. They get caught in a storm in the English Channel after they deposited Mariusz safely ashore for his ship across the Atlantic. Top right is the causeway at Castle Wash, which has become permanently flooded. I played with a climate change idea in 2015, but realised, they didn’t use fossil fuels to any extent, so no reason for climate change.

Bottom left is the coast road from Wash to Castle Marsh. It’s one of my favourites. The bottom right is another favourite, for different reasons, the crossing on stepping stones of the Ensay Burn on Mull. They collapse! Dylan falls into the burn and is washed out to sea, and onto an isolated cliff. At first it just looked a mess, but slowly it took shape, and adding shading when I got the original onto the iPad made a whole lot of difference.

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.

All were done in the same way. These come from books 6. Bravo Victor, 8. The Princelings of the North, 9 Chronicles of Marsh and the Messenger Misadventures. Dylan is a regular character from book 8 onwards. Give him and inch and he’ll take a mile.

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.