
06/17/2025
How do you draw... a Wanting Monster? In today’s post, illustrator shares how she came up with the visual language for her picture book THE WANTING MONSTER’s titular creature.
“The Wanting Monster evolved over many years. He is the sum of so many stories, experiences and dreams. He has grown from the size of a house to that of a beetle.
In the beginning, when he lived in the shadow play we created, he was the embodiment of grief and darkness, the consumer of all things, devouring and frightful. As the narrative shifted and (author Martine Murray) developed him into the monster you see in our first book, he became an instigator of mayhem and strife, gleeful and unrepentant. After countless iterations, the Wanting Monster evolved into a more complete being, the one you see now in Enchanted Lion’s edition: he was visually almost the same monster as before, but something essential had also changed, and he now had those most human of qualities, sorrow, shame, and vulnerability. He still has the darkness, but also, I think he’s pretty hilarious and relatable.
I have always admired Maurice Sendak, and WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE remains one of my most loved and earliest experiences of literature and the magic of illustration. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Max and his marvellous monster suit surfaced as inspiration. Also surfacing was the possibility that within the Wanting Monster suit, there lived a Max—that every wanting monster has a child, a Max, inside.
My wiry haired Jack Russell, Tintin, with his cunning, impossible naughtiness and greedy ways, also figured as inspiration. He had to show up somewhere, frankly. He’s made his presence felt in every other aspect of my life, so it was inevitable he’d turn up in my first published book.
I am fortunate to have a small, beautiful studio at the back of my garden. Apart from drawing and painting, I work in ceramic. All of my work and the garden I have created feed each other. Everything I make speaks to my love of the natural world. My wish is to communicate this and inspire others. To speak of what we have and what we have to lose. I hope this is what I’ve done with THE WANTING MONSTER.”