I’ve been a children's book illustrator for more than 30 years now, producing imagery practically every day, and I’m still finding out about my craft and learning new things as regards the wider world of visual literacy. I’ve certainly made fresh discoveries with this book (and am thrilled to have added ‘plewds’ and ‘squeans’ to my vocabulary!).

Working alone in my studio, I’ve always felt that I create instinctively, in that I never quite know what it is that I’m after until I’ve found it, although it's generally pretty clear to me when something isn't going the right way. So it's been an affirmative experience to see, discussed and made real in the preceding chapters, the myriad factors that are involved, whether consciously or subconsciously, in the image-making process. It's been revelatory too, to learn how fellow illustrators make decisions about things like technique, composition and colour, and to read about what influenced them in their formative years.

I don't have children and when I create my books I rely to a large degree on going back to my own childhood and remembering what engaged me as boy – the things I found interesting, appealing and funny. I’ve a good memory for those early years, and I can recall with particular vividness certain books I absorbed, whether bought for me or borrowed from the library. To be more precise, I remember pictures in those books, images that are seared forever in my brain and affect me to this day.

Those images fall into two distinct categories. There were the painterly illustrations used in some of my picture books, and synonymous with the Ladybird ‘readers’ that my generation grew up with. Only, to my young mind (and everyone of my generation I’ve ever discussed it with) those images weren't painted – they were real. We were all able to step right into the pages and join Peter and Jane, or the characters from the ‘Well-loved Tales’ series (my own favourites were The Elves and the Shoemaker and The Princess and the Pea) in their sensory worlds, feeling the sunshine or rain on our faces, the grass, sand or snow beneath our feet, entering inside the buildings, sitting on the furniture, touching the fabrics, tasting the food. I relished the fabrics and the food in particular.