“When you come up with a solution, if you’re doing it in a book like this in a poetic form where it’s almost like little Lego blocks and you’re trying to get the right Lego blocks to fit in, that can change the initial idea of the image.” Getting that balance right is quite tricky. “Then words have their own constraint because they have to sound right, they have to fit a certain space, have a certain rhythm and a certain openness and specificity. “Usually for me it starts with an image and then I have a sense of what the words might be, not necessarily what the meaning of the words are but how certain words might sit next to the image and make it even more evocative,” he says. Tan describes the act of pairing his artworks with words as “like a game of ping-pong”. “What you are seeing is hand-painted images which are based on little reference shots and photographic assemblages and just using my skills as a painter to try and bind all those things up into something that is convincing and also a little bit other worldly - so keeping it looking quite painterly, not too realistic or too crisp or resolved,” he explains. I found that fascinating and there was something about that moment of release that reminded me of somebody leaving a job that they hate and flying off to the forest.” Camera Icon An illustration from Shaun Tan’s latest book, Cicada.Īs well as the preliminary sketches Tan built small sculptures and took photographs to use as references. “After this massive amount of time doing very little, they die and it all starts again. “I was watching a David Attenborough documentary with a section on the cicada lifestyle explaining how they spend up to 17 years underground and then they emerge and mate and fly around and lay eggs all at once,” he says.

The Academy Award best short film winner for The Lost Thing also drew inspiration for the picture book from a nature documentary. “There was one pot plant and I thought it was kind of cute and funny that there is a little flowering plant and for some reason I just imagined there’s a big insect working there and that’s what he had to nibble on.

Cicada shaun tan book