Illustrator and author Marianna Coppo is known for her naive style of illustration, creating playful illustrated narratives composed of simple shapes and blobs of color. A celebrated children’s author and a master of the picture book, Coppo employs a mixture of techniques that includes tempera, pastels, and digital collage.
“Creating a book is an incredibly exciting and terribly frustrating experience,” admitted the Italian author in an interview with The Picture Book Review. Still, she finds that the “aha-insight moment”, when it happens, is amazing. “I’m not a very methodical person and I tend to scribble down stories,” she shared, explaining her creative process. “When I first come up with a story, it seems perfect (it never is). Then comes the part that I have to make concrete all of the things that I have in my head and that’s when the trouble begins.”
Like all good things in life, her work requires some decision making and, regrettingly, some compromise. According to Coppo, working on a book can be a taxing exercise. “Often I fall in love with the idea and lose sight of the bigger picture,” she says. “In practical terms, it comes down to making compromises.”
But creating picture books also means she gets to do the two things she enjoys best: drawing and writing. “The idea to give this form to my stories came quite naturally,” she admits.
