© Ron Brooks, illustration from Fox, text by Margaret Wild, Allen & Unwin, 2000. Mixed media on paper, Peter Williams Collection.

Illustrator Ron Brooks explains how he responded to Fox, a story by Margaret Wild:

‘That first picture was a real mixed-media job: a multi-layered collage of bits and pieces of different papers, heavy impasto, oil paint, acrylic, ink, watercolour, shellac, oil sticks. Instead of drawing with pens, pencils or whatever, I gouged, scratched and scraped my way through all this stuff using kitchen forks, bits of wire, old dental tools, bits of rusty tin, sandpaper – whatever seemed to work – to find my lines…Until I felt the image had everything I was able to find. Until I felt it matched the voice in the writing – the texture of the language.’

– Ron Brooks, Drawn from the heart, a memoir, Allen & Unwin, 2010