Aurélie Guillerey grew up in France, sharing her time between school and a conservatoire where she learnt to play the piano, She went on to study Illustration at the renowned l’École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg, graduating in 1999. She now lives in Rennes, France. Her illustrations have been used in many magazines over the last 15 years as well as on posters for children’s theatre companies. She was recently commissioned by the English company 1973, nineteenseventythree to illustrate postcards and wrapping paper and has had her work exhibited at a French library. She has had several successful children’s books published in France including the Sous ma Couverture vit un…. series (Under my covers lives a …. ). Children are Naughty for Flying Eye Books is her first book in English.
To find out a little more about her work, we asked Aurélie the following questions:
What inspires your work?
My children inspire my work- my 10 year old and my baby. I feel like I draw them in all my books. My baby doesn’t sleep through the night and that inspired a story that I just wrote, I hope that it becomes a pretty picture book…
My work is influenced by poster art of the 1950s and artists such as Nathalie Parain, Sempé, Tomi Ungerer and many others.
Tell us a little bit about your process…
I make a lot of sketches in sketchbooks based on ideas from things noticed around me. I then draw these on to a palette that allows me to easily move my framing. For the last few years, I have abandoned my brushes in favour of digital, now reserving my crayons and paint for portraits of my relatives.