Paul Kidby, in conversation with Duncan Walker. Saturday 25th January at Salisbury Museum.
I saw this event advertised on Facebook, and living a short train ride away from Salisbury, I knew I had to go!
Duncan Walker is Lead Curator at the Russell Coates Museum in Bournemouth and seemed to be a natural at interviewing. The conversation started with slides showing Paul as a child and they began by talking about how he first got into illustration, from working in false teeth manufacturing, to painting roller blinds, and finally breaking into commercial illustration. The slides then moved to showing pages from his latest book “Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld” and Paul talked about how he came to work with Terry, (spoilers - it took three attempts!) how he designs his characters, and how some are based on people he knows. Particularly of note is Granny Weatherwax who is based on his mother (“I saw that ‘look’ a lot!”) and his creation of Greebo in human form being based on Sean Bean. Paul also talked about how Terry would offer suggestions on how he could change his designs to more reflect how he visualised them, which was really interesting.
We saw illustrations of Tiffany, the Nac Mac Feegle - Paul explained that when he gave Terry the painting, Terry pointed out which one he felt was Rob Anybody - and he also talked in detail about the delight he has in parodying famous paintings, such as his ‘Mona Ogg’, ‘The Finger of Cohen’ and the classic ‘Night Watch’ by Rembrandt. Paul said that he has an actual list of famous paintings he’d love to parody, but won’t give them away just in case they don’t live up to his expectations!
After the talk, and a fire alarm (caused not by an actual fire, but evidently by all the body heat from the room!), we all queued very politely to wait for our chance to have Paul sign our books. Having travelled on my own, it was really nice to chat with other Terry Pratchett fans and everyone was very lovely and friendly, as Pterry fans always are!
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