Meet the Illustrator

Margaret is painting the next Pink Patsy book!

Every Pink Patsy picture is painted by hand by Margaret, the illustrator and co-creator of Pink Patsy the Adventurous Hare. Right now she is working on the illustrations for the next Pink Patsy book, and she is doing it in the front window of our shop on Muswell Hill Broadway, where everyone can watch the new adventure come to life.

How a Pink Patsy picture is made

Each picture starts with research. Margaret works from photos of the real places Pink Patsy visits, and from her earlier paintings of Pink Patsy, so that details like Pink Patsy’s ears look just right every time. Sometimes she traces the outlines, and sometimes she draws a picture more than once until it is right.

Then she washes in the sky and builds up the colours layer by layer: soft blues, bright wildflowers, fluttering butterflies and, of course, Pink Patsy herself. Like every artist, Margaret makes mistakes, and she learns from each one. It takes patience, practice and a steady hand, and every finished painting becomes a page in a Pink Patsy book.

At 86 years young, Margaret has illustrated ten Pink Patsy books, and the very first picture she painted was Pink Patsy gazing up at the moon. She and her daughter Wendy dream up the adventures together, then Wendy writes the stories and Margaret brings them to life with her brush. Margaret believes every picture tells a story, and she hopes her paintings inspire children to pick up a brush, use their imagination and fall in love with nature.

See Margaret’s Pink Patsy mural at the Crocodile Café · Meet the rest of the Pink Patsy crew