Each morning I climb the stairs to my city-centre studio in Dublin, tea and muffin in hand, to my drawing table underneath the window, littered with sketches, paints, pots of white spirits, brushes and palates of oils from the previous day. Shelves of books surround the walls, paintings, pencil sketches, postcards. A dream-catcher dangles above my head, letting only the good fall through. A small potted fig tree sits on my table, a friend to all the other plants around me. Sometimes I feel as if I'm lost in a forest. I sit down and survey the scene, sipping my tea and picking up the threads from the day before. Outside, my view is of old slate rooftops framed by an expansive sky. Cloud patterns and light-changes shape my day. I have no clock, and the passing of time is only broken by a welcome chat and coffee with my friend Dermot in the morning, and lunch in the afternoon with my partner, Owen.
I work in oil paints on a gessoed background. Gesso is a white primer with which I create about eight textured layers before beginning to paint in oils. Each layer must be allowed to dry before another layer is added, so my style is both labour and time intensive. After all this preparation I find it most difficult to make the first mark; to translate the imagery in my head into pictorial language on paper.
I begin each picture book by reading the text and making thumbnail sketches, considering costume, setting, colour, character, and architectural detail.
People ask me where do you get your ideas? What happens if you get a mental block? If I'm having a bad day, I escape to the bookstores. I sit on the floor of the children's section, poring over my old favourites and discovering new treasures. I have the same love and wonder as a child.
I spend hours in the library, visiting museums, sketching. To find a magic book in the library can release a stream of ideas. I can also turn to my own shelves for reference - books on painters, butterflies, insects, folk art, and so on.
Not all my work was painted in this studio, my first picture book was illustrated under the shadow of Mount Wellington in Hobart, Tasmania. It was an entirely different kettle of fish to where I work now. I lived in a rented house with Owen, our only furniture a patio set and a bed! Days were spent illustrating from morning till night, chasing patches of light across the room, in the evenings we were visited by kookaburras and screeching possums.
I finished my new book, Jack and the Beanstalk, two weeks ago, sending the finished artwork by courier is always daunting as, unlike a writer, I have no backup copy. It is like sending a part of myself on an uncertain journey and I can only rest easy when I know the illustrations have arrived safely.
At the end of the day I leave the clutter behind, wash my brushes and meet my friends in Peter's Pub: "Best Drinks in Good Company!"
Over the last year since I came back from my travels in Australia and India, I've felt the pull of the west, and hope to paint my next book Tales of Old Ireland under the shadow of Ben Bulben.
Niamh Sharkey is the illustrator of Tales of Wisdom and Wonder, and The Gigantic Turnip for which she was awarded the 1999 Mother Goose Award. Jack and the Beanstalk, also published by Barefoot Books, will be out this autumn.
On Wednesday she won the 1998-99 Bisto Book of the Year Award.