An illustrator or author or both?

“We illustrators look at everything in a different dimension,“ Donovan Bixley told his Spark 2018 audience.

Bixley is a well-known children’s book illustrator who has worked on  more than  100 books in 18 languages.

For some books he has both written the story and illustrated it.

“I always try to find out for whom I am doing my work so I can use pictures, humour, or words in a way that my targeted audience can enjoy.”

Bixley announced his new release – The Illustrated Biography of Mozart – which  he has been working on for several years.

“I got the inspiration for this work from a big fat book called Faithfully Mozart published in 2005,”  Bixley said.

Faithfully Mozart uses letters written by the composer to describe his world view.

Bixley’s book looks at Mozart from the point of view of others and was delivered to the publishers last week.

Bixley has also published a book about Māui,  the great cultural hero and trickster in Polynesian mythology.

Also in the pipeline in Bixley’s Taupo studio is a part novel and part illustrated book about Leonardo da Vinci – a work he describes as his toughest challenge yet.