Today, I had the pleasure of performing at the Cheltenham Science Festival alongside TV vet and author Jess French. We were speaking to an audience of children and their parents about animals – specifically, which room you’d choose to house different species in your home. We’d preselected ten animals, then let the children vote, which led to some good-natured haggling (ably handled by our chair, Becci Smith).
Jess talked about the animals and how they might cause problems in your house – we were talking about giraffes, hippos, beavers, meerkats and other unlikely house pets. Meanwhile, I demonstrated how to draw each animal and offered a few tips for young illustrators in the audience.
The key thing I like to share with kids is that illustration starts with observation. It’s always best to get in the room or environment with the animal – to really see how it moves and works. Photos can be misleading. Of course, we can’t always be in the room, so illustrators have long relied on reference books, and now, tools like Wikicommons or Google Images.
Personally, when I’m asked to illustrate a new animal – especially if it’s a main character – the first thing I search for are images of its skeleton and close ups of the feet and paws. That tells me everything about its underlying structure. And that’s one of my things: I’m a bit obsessed with structure. Once you understand what’s going on underneath, it becomes much easier to throw a surface ‘robe’ over it – even if the skeleton’s never seen, it’s there, holding everything up – even in simple cartoon drawings. Jess told me she could tell when an illustrator didn’t really know how an animal worked.
That’s how I draw for a book illustration: a light lattice sketch in pencil to place the pose and composition, then I build from there, always considering how it will sit beside the text. That’s traditional illustration. But now? You can ask AI to do the same thing in seconds.
Prompting as Art Direction
I’ve been experimenting with image generation on ChatGPT and realise that prompting is just like being an art director. Having been on the receiving end of art direction for decades, I finally understand how frustrating that job must be. You want results, and fast. So naturally, art directors return to illustrators they know and trust. People who “get it” and deliver.
Now, AI delivers.
And it’s starting to flood not just the internet, but books too. So where does that leave illustrators? Where does it leave any creative?
Because it’s not just illustration. It’s music, writing, voice, every creative discipline. They are all being reshaped by generative AI.
Copying Photographs Is Dead
I don’t think illustration is over. But copying photos? That’s done. That’s what many illustrators and art students were trained to do. You will often hear people say of a painting – “That’s amazing – it looks just like a photograph!” well.. that’s because, essentially, it is a photograph.
When I show kids or grownups how to draw something, I take them through the drawing step by step and… suddenly they can do it! They’ve followed my instructions. It sort of looks like my original.
But ask them to take that drawing and turn it into an expressive character – something that can leap, twist, do handstands – and they freeze. Because that takes a different level of skill, of internalised form, of imagination grounded in understanding. There’s no shortcut for that. You have to learn to draw.
If I’m sketching, I go straight to ink as I don’t need to fit a pre-determined shape. The structure is there in my head from years of practice and observation. That structure is like the muscle memory of a musician’s fingers. If you’ve done the practice so you don’t have to think about the notes – you are free to add the expression. So it is with drawing.
That’s what will matter more and more: Your inner vision translated into a new but recognisable view of the world — something human. Something lived.
I’ve always said that illustration is storytelling. That’s what we’ll need in the years ahead. AI will do decorative illustration brilliantly, instantly, and cheaply. But human illustration? From now on, that’s about expression – the storytelling “voice” saying: “This is how I see the world.”
Human Creativity as a Generative Transformer
AI might one day start generating its own styles – truly original ones. It might say: “This is what I, AI, notice about Flying Foxes,” and produce unique visual takes. But until it reaches true AGI, it’s still remixing – pre-trained on human work.
It’s fair to say humans are pre-trained generative transformers, too. We study those who came before – the Quentin Blakes, the Maurice Sendaks – and we absorb bits of their technique. We see how they draw noses or feet or eyes. But we don’t just mash them together like a collage, or force them together like bits of jigsaws from different puzzles. We transform them into something new. That’s the difference.
And that transformation? That’s the human layer.
It’s like a lattice underneath, built from what you’ve studied, but overlaid with your own way of seeing. That takes time. It takes drawing, analysis, effort. And when it comes through, people recognise it. They say, “Ah — that’s your style.”
AI can’t replicate that yet. It can imitate. But it can’t yet mean anything.
Do Your Thing
So, if you want to be an illustrator – learn to draw and learn to tell YOUR stories. If you want to be a musician – play the music that’s in your head, not what’s trending on Spotify or generated by a loop pack. If you’re a writer – write what matters to you, don’t let the AI flood push you off your course.
Just do your thing.
That’s what makes your work irreplaceable. Not its polish. Not its speed. But its point of view — the story only you can tell.