Babette's Caribbean Notebook

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• Pictures on left side, clockwise from top left:
• Cane Dance;
• Hurricane in Tortola;
• Very Fast Sea Rainbow;
• Old Road, St. Kitts;

 

• Pictures on right side, clockwise from top left:
• Fried Egg in the Water;
• Time for Work;
• A Beach Picture;
• Hurricane in Tortola (full picture);
• Cane Garden Bay from the Top

The text from the page spread is reproduced here for clarity

When I think about the future of illustration, I realise that the nature of picture-book publishing has changed over the past few years for three reasons: Increasing competition from electronic media; lower levels of literacy because of this competition; and the flooding of an ever decreasing market. In the 1900s there were only a few very good quality author / illustrators around. Today there are many more, but quantity, not inspiration seems to be the order of the day. We shouldn’t despair, since good illustration, like all the best art, will live on and be remembered. The inferior will fall by the wayside.

This is such a gloomy thought that I have decided to cheer myself up with lots of colour, texture, movement and sound. Here is the result: my Caribbean sketchbook. I have just returned to England from my other home in Tortola, where I have been finishing The Man Shortage Company, my first adult novel. While working on this, I have also been drawing some new zingy stuff. Because the Caribbean is so clean and the light so pure, everything is bright and sunny. I love the way people put colours together there. They can dance crazily, or can be black and velvety as a night scented with frangipani. They can be hot and humid or cool and sparkling. West Indians paint their houses in an amazing contrast of colour from bright pink and sea green to dove grey, eggshell blue and white. Even the graveyards are a mass of bright tiles and vibrant plastic flowers (the goats can’t eat these).

You start wearing all these wonderful colours so that you can live them. Then, when you get back to the grey reality of winter in England, still wearing them, people look at you – a peacock among the crows – in a strange way. You just have to brave it out. I love sloshing paint around like this. It is very good for me, as I can a bit "tight" stuck indoors at a desk working on a small scale. I am having a wonderful time, so who cares if no one else likes it?

Illustration magazine UK