Chris Wormell's world of animals

One Smart Fish When I was young, I loved fish. I had lots of fish tanks in a garden shed, and went fishing most weekends. I drew pictures of fish all the time. I’ve always wanted to do a picture book about fish, but didn’t have a story – until this idea came along. The book's about a really smart fish. In this picture he’s beating all the other fish in the ocean at chess. The pictures are drawn first on watercolour paper, then painted. Some of the fish are outlined in coloured pencil, while others – those I wanted to bring right to the foreground – are outlined in black ink Photograph: Chris Wormell Photograph: guardian.co.uk One Smart Fish The story begins with all the weird and wonderful fish that filled the ocean long, long ago. I really looked forward to painting the pictures of all these fish, but after pages and pages of them, I began to wish my ocean wasn’t quite so full … Photograph: Chris Wormell Photograph: guardian.co.uk One Smart Fish ... So it was a relief to get to this spread. Here, the smart fish, with his homemade feet, explores the land and finds it totally empty. A few pages later, though, I had to draw the whole of evolution! Photograph: Chris Wormell Photograph: guardian.co.uk Ferocious Wild Beasts This picture is painted in watercolour over a pencil drawing, with some coloured pencil outlining. A line of large animals, led by a small boy, creep warily through the forest, terrified of ferocious wild beasts – whatever they might be. I got the idea for this story while working on another book ... Photograph: Chris Wormell Photograph: guardian.co.uk Molly and The Night Monster ... This one. The two stories are very similar – large animals, small child and mother – I just juggled the elements around. In Molly and The Night Monster, the animals are all in the little girl’s imagination. Here, she thinks the sound on the other side of her bedroom door might be "a big brown bear, tiptoeing along the corridor" Photograph: Chris Wormell Photograph: guardian.co.uk Molly and the Night Monster Or perhaps it’s a giant giraffe. The pictures are all painted in watercolour on blue-grey toned paper, with some coloured pencil outlining and white chalk highlights. I must do another ‘night time’ book: they’re so much easier to paint; no decisions about colour! I only used cobalt blue for this one Photograph: Chris Wormell Photograph: guardian.co.uk The Wild Girl The Molly story in turn grew from another book – also about a little girl and some big animals, although in the end there was just one large animal in the story – a bear. The book was about a girl living all alone in the wilderness with only a small brown dog for company. In this picture, she calls out but can only hear the echo of her own voice calling back from the high mountains Photograph: Chris Wormell Photograph: guardian.co.uk An Alphabet of Animals Here’s something different: a linocut. It was made by cutting four separate lino blocks, each used to print a different colour. Coloured ink is rolled onto the block, which is then placed on paper and an impression taken, using a printing press. Once all the colours have been added the print is dried off before the black block is applied. This picture is from the first book I made for children (for my son, Jack) Photograph: Chris Wormell Photograph: guardian.co.uk Blue Rabbit and Friends And here’s another linocut, from my first story book. Both these prints were made using … Photograph: Chris Wormell Photograph: guardian.co.uk ... my 1846 Albion press. It's quite small and sits on a bench (amid all my clutter) and though it's not in mint condition, it works beautifully. If only things nowadays were as reliable as old things like this! Photograph: Chris Wormell Photograph: guardian.co.uk