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Illustrator Spotlight – Lucy Mcloughlin

Sound Waves Literacy 28/11/22

Lucy Mcloughlin’s affinity for drawing and painting stretches as far back in time as she can remember. Despite this, she never considered turning illustration into a career until just four years ago.

After deciding to jump into illustration professionally, Lucy applied for a position at The Illustration Room. She was en route to the airport after travelling around Australia for a year when she received her official job offer.

Lucy now works from her studio in Singapore producing intricate and imaginative digital illustrations. She is one of many illustrators working with our team at Firefly Education to bring the stories in our Sound Waves Decodable Readers to life.

Lucy describes her illustration style as ever-evolving. While she produces most of her illustrations digitally, she loves to utilise watercolour and pencil-like digital brushstrokes to create texture and a childlike feel.

Lucy’s playful style and expert use of colour have enriched the storylines in many Sound Waves Decodable Readers, including My Teacher, Bits and Bobs and Feed the Goat.

One of her favourite parts of the project was creating unique characters for each Decodable Reader. She especially enjoyed illustrating Kazz, a shop owner selling a random array of items in Bits and Bobs.

‘I loved creating Kazz. I imagined him as a very eccentric persona who wears strange clothes and is overly chatty, while his shop is dark and mysterious and disorderly,’ she said.

‘I tried to depict that vision by giving Kazz a moustache, small round glasses, a big red hat with feathers and a funky purple blazer that he wears over his checkered shirt.’

Another motivator for Lucy was imagining how students would feel when they saw the illustrations for the first time.

‘The stories were a lot of fun to work on. I really enjoyed coming up with the characters and imagining what little children reading the story might think,’ she said.

‘I would picture them giggling at Kazz and finding him strange.’

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

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