About
Illustrator Trish Hill
Trish’s love of colour and shape developed early. Her first remembered dream was of bright orange pumpkins!
Illustrator Trish Hillʼs parents travelled widely and sent home postcards embellished with beautiful stamps from exotic places.
These sparked a real fascination for the worldʼs natural wonders. Illustrator Trish Hill was to later visit such places as Egypt, Greece, Mexico, Peru, Thailand, Tahiti, New Zealand, The Maldives, The Rocky Mountains of Colorado and the vibrant streets of San Francisco.
Illustrator Trish Hill studied in Melbourne, Australia, as a fine artist – specialising in printmaking and drawing, particularly life drawing which she continues to indulge in today. It brings her back to the fundamentals of drawing and the human form. Trish’s career as an illustrator started by designing wrapping paper and cards, progressing to all manner of illustration for advertising including story boards for tv commercials, swing ticket designs for clothing, Australian flora bookmark designs, posters and VHS covers for ABC tv series “Round the Twist”, commissioned watercolour sketches of Melbourne and other Australian capital cities. She got her break into the publishing industry with a commission to illustrate her first book “Cosmic Crunch and The Blue Moon Fantastics” for Lloyd O’neill Publishing. From there her love of childrenʼs book illustration and design blossomed.
Trish has since then, illustrated hundreds of books for children, each time using a different style and medium – from pen and ink to watercolour, pastel and crayon, to collage and scraperboard. Trish’s inspiration comes in part from the work of Maurice Sendak, John Birmingham and Eric Carle. In part from her most treasured books read to her as a child – ”Ping the Duck”, “The Little House”, “Little Bear”, all of the Beatrix Potter books, “Winnie the Pooh”, “Curious George”, “Ant and Bee”, “Teddy Bear Coleman”, “The Just So Stories”, the list goes on. Trish’s greatest artistic influences are David Hockney, Brett Whitely, Matisse, Picasso, Andy Warhol (particularly his early graphic work for advertising), Egon Schiele, Toulouse Lautrec and Gustav Klimpt.
Illustrator Trish Hill is published both in Australia and The USA. Her childrenʼs books include “What Makes a Bird a Bird?” by May Garelick, “The Old Manʼs Mitten” retold by Yvonne Pollock, “Freeing Billy” by Meredith Costain and “Somewhere” by Jane Baskwill.
Trish has also worked on countless other books for a huge range of literacy series, including chapter books for reluctant readers, anthologies, teachersʼ resource books, text books and picture books for pre-school. Young Australia – Thomas Nelson, Bookshelf- Scholastic publishing , PM Story Books- Nelson ITP, Zappers- Rigby Heinemann, Super Doopers – Addison Wesley Longman, Crackers – MacMillan Education, Insights – Rigby Heinemann, Zippers – Reed Educational, Jumpball Series – Addison Wesley Longman, Aussie Nibbles – Penguin, U.S. Literary Programme – Reed Educational, Tristars – John Parsons for Horwitz Martin, Just Kids – Black Dog Books, Momentum – Scholastic, Chatterbox – Pearson Education, and many others.
Trish moved to the beautiful coastal town of Barwon Heads on the Bellarine Peninsula, three years ago, after holidaying there for most of her life. Illustrator Trish Hill works from her studio at home, punctuated by long beach walks with her husband Dougal, Harry the Needy Dog, (Thereʼs a book to follow) and the newest addition to the family , Winnie the Shnoodle(Another book to follow). And the best weekends are the ones when her two children come home to stay.
