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Illustrator Spotlight – Cheryl Orsini

Sound Waves Literacy 28/5/22

‘What’s not to love about a shark in running gear and a frog in lycra with a cupcake?’

This quirky question was posed by Cheryl Orsini, who has spent more than 20 years imagining ‘out of the box’ concepts like these and translating them into captivating illustrations.

Over this time, Cheryl’s illustration style has evolved into one that showcases whimsical watercolour with a humorous edge.

Cheryl produced charming illustrations for a number of our Sound Waves Decodable Readers including Tom Cat and, her personal favourite, Have You Ever?

Have You Ever? is a funny and imaginative story that features various animals living in a city and acting like humans.

Cheryl uses illustration to make the impossible, possible. This is perfectly demonstrated in the Decodable Reader Tom Cat, which follows the story of a jumbo cat that needs to go to the vet.

‘In Tom Cat I loved working with the oversized scale of the cat in relation to the people,’ she said.

‘There was quite a bit of rough work in the planning of these to make everything look, somehow, possible.’

‘For instance, I had to figure out how to get Tom Cat on top of the van, so I decided to thread the giant belt through the window so he could go safely to the vet.’

A unique challenge for Cheryl when illustrating the Decodable Readers was adding life to the story without giving away too much and making the text too predictable for students.

‘It’s challenging to avoid showing too much with the illustrations and instead letting the reader decode for themselves,’ she said.

Cheryl relished the opportunity to work on a broad range of illustrations for our Decodable Readers.

‘It must be exciting to see these Readers in action!’ she said.

See more of Cheryl’s work on her website or Instagram.

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