Freelance illustrator and designer Sinead Hanley tells Reading Time how cheeky Nepalese chickens helped bring her first published book, Chooky-doodle-doo, to life and lets slip a secret hiding in the feathers of the Chooky-doodle-doo rooster…
As a child I was always making blobby animals out of clay scooped from the creek running through the backyard and telling stories of the adventures of goannas, bobtails, lizards and bandicoots. The bush and nature that encompassed the house which I grew up in the Perth foothills was the perfect foundation for creativity and folklore.
After studying graphic design and printmaking, distant shores beckoned. While travelling through remote places I would find myself killing time at bus stops sketching people and the immediate landscape. Amongst a pile of my dusty sketchbooks, I found pages of gregarious and brazen chickens in Marpha, Nepal that gave great inspiration for the characters of Chooky-doodle-doo. I still vividly remember the cheeky chicken havoc on the dusty cobblestone streets!
Collage, texture and smudge are what I like to play with when illustrating. You can lose hours mixing found tactile objects and graphic shape on a page to find the right balance. The rooster in Chooky-doodle-doo has type hidden in his feathers – residue words from a forgotten story found in a thrift shop somewhere.
It was such fun creating the characters for Chooky-doodle-doo – it being my first published book – I can squawk in enjoyment!