This afternoon William Grill gave a talk to a gathered crowd at the exhibition gallery in Somerset House about the process, thinking and inspiration behind his non-fiction picture book Shackleton’s Journey, published by Flying Eye Books (an imprint of Nobrow Press). William’s illustrations for Shackleton’s Journey won the AOI Award for Picture Books in the New Talent category this year, and those there for the talk were lucky enough to get a chance to flick through several of William’s sketchbooks and a vast amount of original work for the book.

As he spread out the developmental work for Shackleton’s Journey, William discussed his process when creating the illustrations, talking the audience through his roughs, character designs, thumbnail ideas and some of the final images. He stressed the importance of keeping sketchbooks, saying “You have to make loads of bad drawings to get any good ones” and mentioned that only about 3% of the displayed drawings for Shackleton’s Journey actually made it into the book. When asked about the feedback and reactions to the book, William stated that having some of the relations of the crew members from the actual voyage get in contact with him has been one of the highlights.

You can read more about William’s practice in Varoom 27: The Hermenauts issue, available to purchase here.

William’s work will be on show at Somerset House until 2 November.