The Art of Tickled Moon: Illustrator Jodie Wonford’s Story

Behind every Tickled Moon personalised children’s book lies the wonderful imagination and artistic talent of Jodie Wonford. Over the past five years, Jodie has been the creative force bringing Tickled Moon’s heartwarming stories to life with her beautiful illustrations.

With a love for drawing that started in her school days followed by a serendipitous journey into illustration, Jodie has spent over five years illustrating all of Tickled Moon’s personalised stories. In this interview, she takes us behind the scenes of her creative process, shares her favourite illustrations, and reflects on the joys and challenges of bringing these unique books to life.

How did you get started as a children’s book illustrator? Was there a specific moment or inspiration?

In all honesty, it was a bit by chance! I have always enjoyed drawing and making and doing anything creative, and that was always going to be a big part of my life. 

At school I had a great, supportive art teacher who assumed that I would choose art as one of my subjects but I actually hadn’t initially. That made me think about it a little more (I also felt a little bad when I told him that I hadn’t chosen it!) and I decided to swap one of the subjects to art.

I then went on to study it at degree level at Kingston University and here I am! Thank goodness my art teacher caused me to change my mind all those years ago!

 

Can you walk us through your creative process when designing the illustrations for a Tickled Moon book?

Tickled Moon’s stories are so fun, cheeky, and heartwarming that they are an absolute joy to illustrate.

I get excited when I read them for the first time because they give me loads of ideas and conjure up so many feelings.

Then I carry out any research necessary to the story. Sometimes that’s looking at pictures or drawing from observation.

 

I start to plan what will go on each page by drawing character designs and roughs. These are line drawings, and start as being very rough, but become more defined when it’s time to send them to Alison and Simon at Tickled Moon. 

Once the character designs and roughs have been approved, it’s time to start colouring the pages and adding all of the detail that brings the book to life.

I work with Alison and Simon throughout the whole process, updating them, sending new work, receiving feedback and discussing what works and what doesn’t. They are extremely supportive and approachable. Their help and feedback have bettered me as an illustrator and helped me improve lots of the images. The illustrations wouldn’t be what they are without their insight! 

What’s your favourite part about illustrating?

I love the feeling when you just get into the zone and your mind is clear. And then all of a sudden hours have gone by without you realising. I find being creative so calming and therapeutic when I’m in the right mindset.

I also love the feeling at the end of creating something. When you look back over all of that hard work and see the ups and downs, failures and successes, but it’s all finished! 

 

What are the biggest challenges working on a Tickled Moon personalised book?

The biggest challenge when illustrating a Tickled Moon book is the fact that we can’t show the main character- which is whoever the book is personalised for. We don’t want to exclude anyone by allocating the main character a gender, age, ethnicity or hair colour. So we have to come up with creative ways to get around that!

How has your approach to illustrating evolved over time?

I think that my confidence has definitely evolved over time and with experience. But apart from that, I still feel as excited and lucky to be able to do what I do as when I started my first book with Tickled Moon, which was over 5 years and 8 books ago now!

What’s your favourite illustration from our books and why?

My favourite illustration is the seaside spread in The Longest Cuddle. I love that everyone is so happy and hugging which spreads into the sea, with a mermaid, octopus and scuba diver getting involved!

What are your ambitions? Where would you like to be in 20 years time?

In 20 years time I would love to be illustrating full time in a studio that has other creatives working there as part of a community. I would like to have built more of my own brand, and have worked with lots of different people. To be more confident and have grown as a person. 

Most importantly, I want to have created or contributed towards lots of things that are out there in the world making people happy, inspiring people to be curious and have fun and to be adventurous!

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You can discover all of Jodie’s illustrations in our Tickled Moon shop here.

And you can read more about Jodie in our 2020 interview Meet our Inspirational Illustrator

Interested in illustrating? Learn more about how to become a children’s book illustrator in this article from Penguin books.