Alex Scheffler

Background

Alex Scheffler is a well know illustrator who is probably best known for illustrating and co-creating The Gruffalo With Julia Donaldson. Axel was born in 1957 In Hamburg, Germany. In The 80's Axel moved to England to study Illustration at the Bath Academy of art where he spent much of his time drawing sheep and peacock's in the grounds of Corsham Court and earned his first class degree. Scheffler then moved to London where he began illustrating for a variety of English and German Advertising companies, magazines and newspapers before moving into book illustrations in the 90's which is when the Gruffalo was created.

Style
Axel developed his style himself. But, he is a perfectionist and is not happy with his work on occasions. Scheffler finds it difficult to draw a succession of events and prefers to tell a story all in one picture; when you look at his illustrations over the years you can see his progression from pointy nose characters to softer styles.
There are many people involved in the publication of a picture book. He always starts with ink outlines and then colours on top of the inks and rubs in the colours with his fingers. At the end he reinforces the outline with the ink and adds details, such as lines for fur and leaves. Nowadays he is able to ask the publishers to make small alterations in Photoshop but, previously he was only able to change it by hand and then email the new version.


The Grufflo

The final product is very influenced by the editor and art director.With The Gruffalo cover Axel's original just had a shadow of The Gruffalo, but the editor wanted the Gruffalo on the cover so he redrew it. However, in the US they did not want the main protagonist on the cover so he had to draw another one where he hid The Gruffalo partially behind a shrub. This only appeared on the US first edition, the second edition adopted the UK design.

Axel's best advice to aspiring illustrator is to practice hard and always keep your illustrations in a sketch book and keep building on it.