We spoke with CCAD alumni Sally Agar who after a successful career as a designer, working for brands such as H&M in Stockholm, has recently been nominated for the prestigious Waterstones Children’s Book Prize! The nomination is for The Queen Next Door a children’s modern day fairytale co-created with author Marcela Ferreira. The Waterstones Children’s Book Prize is in it’s 12th year and champions the finest new talent in children’s writing and illustration today.

She has come a long way from her days studying her Foundation Diploma at Green Lane, it’s wonderful to hear about the career she has been able to build and how former work in those days are still present in some of her most recent work. Read on to find out some great details about her nomination, career and her advice for creative students stepping out in to the world:

You have been nominated for the Waterstones Children Illustration Prize, tell us about it!

The Waterstones Children’s Book Prize champions new authors and illustrators in Children’s Publishing. As The Queen Next Door was the first book I published as an Illustrator, and the first for the author Marcela Ferreira we were eligible to be nominated. To be honest, I don’t know much about the selection process, I’m just extremely grateful that Waterstones chose our book! I’m absolutely over the moon to receive the nomination, it still feels a bit unreal! I’m really excited to attend the awards ceremony in March and to get to meet the other nominees and people from the industry. It will also be the first time I get to meet the author Marcela, so I’m really looking forward to being able to celebrate our success together.

To be recognised for a nomination feels like a huge opportunity. It’s great publicity for me as an Illustrator, as well as being a huge vote of confidence from Waterstones.

You have been nominated with your book The Queen Next Door, what’s it about?

The Queen Next Door is a modern day fairytale with a great message about the value of friendship and fairness. It encourages children to think about the importance of the people around us, rather than the material possessions they own. I loved Marcela’s story on my first reading; I think the writing is full of heart and humour, so it was easy to fall into the illustrations. Having said that, as a new Illustrator I soon realised there were so many aspects to illustrating a full picture book that I hadn’t originally considered! The book includes a big cast or characters, and some of the large crowd scenes felt a bit daunting at first. The ‘showpiece’ of the book is a huge throne made up of lots of random elements- that also took some time to get right.

As this was my first book I wanted to put as much of myself into it as possible. The Queen’s cat is based on my childhood cat, one of the children is based on my son, and the town scenes were all based on the town we were currently living in. As Marcela hadn’t included much description of the setting of the book I had free rein to illustrate the town as I liked, so it was really fun to include lots of the lovely old houses and buildings around me.

You graduated from our Middlesbrough campus in the 2000’s, when we were formerly CCAD, what did you study and how did you enjoy it?

I did my Foundation Studies year at CCAD, before going on to Winchester School of Art for my degree in Fine Art Painting. I have really fond memories of the old CCAD campus and loved all the opportunities to try out different art disciplines on the Foundation course. We did a lot of life drawing classes which I absolutely loved, and definitely instilled in me a love of drawing. Funnily enough when I began working on my Children’s Book portfolio prior to getting commissions, I found that a lot of my work reminded me of the kind of things I’d been drawing at CCAD 20 years earlier!  It’s nice to think that things came full circle.

You lived in Stockholm for a number of years, did that experience inspire or impact your work?

I worked as a Print Designer for H&M and other fashion companies for nearly 15 years, there are so many skills I learned in that role that translate over to what I do now: interpreting a brief, working to a deadline, thinking about the end product, as well as all the digital skills I acquired. One huge difference is that as a Print Designer you’re required to create work in a variety of styles to fit different products, I often felt like it was beneficial to be a jack-of-all-trades. As a Children’s Book Illustrator it’s the opposite; it’s so important to have a strong, individual style, and that took me some time to work out (and is something I’m still working on!).

I love Sweden and living there all those years definitely impacted me as an Illustrator It also changes the way you experience your own country, so it’s been really interesting (and at times, challenging!) moving back to the UK and seeing it with fresh eyes.

We have a number of students looking to break in to the illustration industry do you have any advice for them?

When it comes to putting a portfolio together my advice would be- do what you love! Work that comes from the heart and that shows us a bit about who you are is always the most engaging. Be brave about putting your work out there; enter competitions and drawing challenges, you never know who might be looking and what opportunities might arise.

Tell us about your future projects!

I’m currently finishing up a musical book about Christmas Carols which will be out at the end of the year, as well as working on an anthology of folk tales due to be published in 2025.

You can see more of Sally’s beautiful work on her website, you can also keep up to date by following her Instagram: @sallyagar_design!