On twins and illustration

Illustration is one of my very favourite things so I was delighted when a ticket came available for last Friday's (sold out) Meet the Illustrators event at Waterstones Picadilly. (Obviously simultaneously sad for Ellen who was very poorly and couldn't go). Nick Sharratt, Alex T. Smith and Chris Haughton are all illustrators I massively admire and it was a joy to hear about their techniques, career trajectories and inspirations. So many wonderful moments, not least when Alex T. Smith revealed that as a small boy he aspired to be either an astronaut or a rabbit.


Whilst listening to these three masters of their craft discussing their work I was reminded of one of the most inspired pieces of illustration work I've come across.

See? The same but different!

Now, we all know about the long-standing collaboration between Nick Sharratt and that little-known author, Jacqueline Wilson, right? Right? Well, this is good! As a child, Double Act was a definite favourite on the bookshelf - MoominTwin and I even once performed a scene from Double Act for a local Speech and Drama competition. In the book we have some twins, Ruby and Garnet: totally indentical, totally inseperable, but actually very different. They have to come to terms with their differences and realise that it's ok to do things separately sometimes ('things' in this case being 'one twin gets to go to a fancy boarding school'. Now I don't know about you un-twinned lot, but the thought of MoominTwin being sent off to boarding school and leaving me behind with no say in the matter is kind of horrific. And yet Ruby is painted as the bad guy - a bit unfair. But it illustrates the point nicely). Anyway, the twins' subtle differences are underlined by the fact that this book is actually co-illustrated with Sue Heap, with Sharratt taking one twin and Heap drawing the other. I just think this is wonderful and such a clever, clever idea. I applaud whichever designer came up with it. Their two styles are very similar and they have co-illustrated some picture books together but it totally highlights how twins can be so alike, but ultimately individual. And as an identical twin, I think that's no bad thing.