Books are my business: Artist, illustrator and designer Dermot Flynn

The most recent book he worked on, Fia and the Last Snow Deer, by Eilish Fisher, won ‘Children’s Book of the Year — Senior’ at the An Post Irish Book Awards.

How did you get into illustrating?

I did a degree in visual communication at the NCAD (National College of Art and Design) about 30 years ago but I didn’t really see illustration as a career. It was essentially graphic design but they had a couple of illustration modules which I always really liked.

I thought I was going to work in film or TV or something like that. Then I got a job with a really good design agency in Dublin, and it got me doing a lot of illustration stuff. 

I fell into doing it, and it was the one thing that I could do really quickly and really well.

I moved to the UK, did a masters in illustration in Brighton, got a job in an animation studio, and kept freelancing at the same time. 

I wish I could say there had been a plan or strategy to it but it all grew really organically.

What does your job involve?

If I’ve got a project on, I will try and do some deep work early in the morning. I always work best for the first three or four hours of the day. 

In the afternoon, I’ll do errands, meet some friends, go for a walk or go swimming or to the gym. 

I also work in the evenings or late at night. I’ve got this weird body clock thing where I’m kind of an early bird and a night owl. 

Then sometimes there will be days where I won’t be at the desk at all.

I also teach at NCAD, which is nice because it lends a bit more structure to the week, and it’s social interaction which is really good. 

Everything I do starts with a drawing, sketching an initial rough idea of how something is going to look. 

Then it usually gets taken into digital to allow for adjusting or tweaking. I have a huge bank of painted textures that I combine with stuff.

I recently did a course in oil painting and I have gotten back into it. When you are working with analogue, and you go back to working in digital, it feels so much fresher and more exciting. It’s good to do both.

What do you like most about what you do?

Visualising something and then realising it. If I’m working on a book, I read it and it’s like I have a movie playing in my head, and I put scenes down, like the landscape, or what the people are wearing and all of that. 

Just having an idea and seeing it develop and change. I also like the variety of stuff I work on.

What do you like least about it?

It can be very precarious. You can have amazing years, and you can have quite lean years. You also have to really manage the solitude. 

Then there’s the self-promotion which is something I think the Irish aren’t very good at.

Three desert island books

The first would be The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea, one of the most wonderful books ever written. It starts in an ordinary way, with a boy finding a book in a bookshop, but from there, it gets surreal. It’s Ireland in a microcosm, the darkness and the light, the funny and the sad.

The next is The Secret History by Donna Tartt, a murder mystery about a group of students studying classics at a college in Vermont. it’s just so beautifully written, every sentence, it’s like biting into a bowl of luscious fruit.

The third is Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, about a family of circus freaks. It is narrated by the family member who they think is the most boring and ordinary, who is a blind, humpbacked albino dwarf. 

They are in such a bizarre environment but they are trying to have a normal family life, and it is about the heartache and the joy of that. It would be a dream project to illustrate any of those books.

instagram: @dermotflynn