Brian Wildsmith's ABC

"I was just blown away by it. The design, the colours. The colours were so vibrant. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. So, then I started looking for his books. He was a great inspiration to me. He is a wonderful draughtsman… but also the layout and the design of these books is fantastic–the animals can be almost abstract yet perfectly observed. Contrasts of green backgrounds, fine texture, the bright white that leaps out at you. Detail and colour. Confident lines. I mean it is extraordinarily good work. “The European comic artists have a different style–they don’t use the thick line of the Americans–they use a finer line.” Then I came to Europe and I came to Antwerp. I did a grand tour of all the great art galleries of Europe. I had a camper van. I wanted to see all this work that I’d studied. In Antwerp I was wandering around and I stumbled across this street of bookshops. I’d never heard of European comics and there were all these French and Flemish comics."