Interview with the illustrator of Fantastic Beasts, Olivia Lomenech Gill

My first official illustration job came about completely by accident, when someone insisted that I meet a ‘very famous English author’, Michael Morpurgo, at a small book festival in France. He had seen me drawing and, based on that, he and his wife asked me to work on a book they were putting together. I think it was partly this book that got me the job of illustrating Fantastic Beasts. Someone at Bloomsbury liked it and showed my work to J.K. Rowling. The first I knew about it was when I had a call from my agent asking me to do some dragons. Apparently, that got me the job.

I had had no real contact with Harry Potter before I took on the job, but I actually didn’t see this as a problem in itself. There are experts and then there are artists, like me, who try and draw things. You come at something with no preconceptions, and if you have a sense of curiosity, you set about researching and interpreting the subject as best you can. Of course I was anxious, as I became quickly aware that there are millions of fans who love and know so much about the galaxy of Harry Potter. Any artist wants to please people with their work, but how is it possible to please SO MANY people? I set about reading all the books, which I enjoyed, and what also helped was realising that Fantastic Beasts has nothing to do with Harry Potter, actually. At least not until Harry takes the book off the shelf in the Hogwarts Library.

If I had stopped to think about it too much, I would have stopped dead in my tracks. As an artist, one applies oneself in the same way regardless of what the job is or who it is for. You just want to do your best.

I haven’t seen any of the films and I was aware that there would be some big differences in the Warner Bros. interpretations and my own, but when I asked the publisher about this, they said it was fine. It’s brilliant how J.K. Rowling’s world has given birth to so many different interpretations of the same things. Apparently, when Newt Scamander comes home at the end of the film, he says that he’s going off to write his book about beasts. That’s the book I have illustrated! I did see Eddie Redmayne at an event, and I considered going up and saying ‘by the way, I just illustrated your book’, but I didn't. He would have just wondered who on Earth this madwoman was!

As any self-employed person knows, one’s work hours often extend beyond any normal working week. All my family have helped with the Fantastic Beasts book. Both directly, modelling for different characters, and indirectly, because towards the end of the project I was working 18 hours a day, so my husband was doing a lot of the domestic jobs and childcare.

No. However, that’s not unusual. It’s the publishers who commission the text and then the illustrator, so they often remain entirely separate. Everything the illustrator really needs to do their job is words and a good art director.

[Fantastic Beasts] led me first to go straight to the source of Renaissance zoology, at the National History Museum in London, where I was able to go through the first printed books on the subject, from 1550, which might have passed into the ‘modern bestiary’ that is Fantastic Beasts. I researched and learnt more about different (real) species, even if I had to adapt and alter them into something else. And, because I’m not good at making stuff up, I really draw on a lot of the domestic things around me. Of course, I'd love to go to Africa to draw, but the view out of my studio window is just as good – just minus the elephants. If you examine the ordinary, you find the extraordinary.

My specialism, if I have one, is copperplate etching. What I like is that it removes some of the control I have over making my work. I never know exactly how things will turn out. It also lends an antiquarian feel to the work. The early renaissance zoological inventories which inspired me for this ‘modern bestiary’ were all illustrated with wood engraving, but the idea is the same. My work gives a nod to the books that inspired me. At the major art fairs in London, my work is displayed alongside artists from the 20th century.

My great-great-aunt was an extremely accomplished printmaker. She worked all her life as an artist, through two world wars, and never married. I have a great respect for her skill and commitment. If she had been a man, she would have had much greater recognition and many more possibilities as an artist. However, I like to think that somehow this legacy inspired me and is continued through what I do.

I’m a pretty traditional artist. I’m not into clever concepts or abstraction – just because I have never got that far. I use really simple techniques such as charcoal drawing, watercolour, oil painting and collage. I know how to use Photoshop, but I didn’t make my work like this. It would take me longer to create the work digitally. The possibilities are endless, but I prefer to be limited by what I know and what I can do.

In terms of being proud, it’s too subjective for me to say. Probably the fans would have a better answer about which beasts are the best. So I might throw that one back to you!

One of the most difficult was the Chimaera. It's a bit of a weird hybrid: lion’s head, goat’s body and dragon’s tail. I couldn't work out how to represent it in a sufficiently terrifying way. But while I was working, there was the awful conflict going on in Syria, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. I would see brief bits of the news and think about the people I knew there and wonder what was happening. And then Palmyra got blown up. I had sat many years ago at that site and done lots of drawings of the most incredible example of classical architecture. This was how I made that particular beast come to life: using the drawings of Palmyra in the background as a small tribute, with the Chimaera as a metaphor for devastation.

Probably all the beasts related to birds of prey. Not too far away from where I live, there is the Kielder Water Bird of Prey Centre, where I sat in an enclosure with a Stellers Sea Eagle with my sketchbook and learnt about them. Being able to study such magnificent 'beasts' from up close was a real privilege.

Working on Fantastic Beasts has made me more interested than ever in the real beasts we share our planet with – though I think we need to work on the ‘sharing’ bit. So, I'm planning a completely crazy project, involving more beasts and more etching, which I hope will also be 'fantastic' in its own way...