Alison Jay

Alison Jay was born in Hertfordshire and grew up in Derbyshire UK.

She studied graphic design at the London College of Communication and specialized in illustration .She graduated with a first class honours degree and began her career working for animation studios, she soon changed exclusively to illustration .

Her first commissions were in editorial and gradually began working in all areas of illustration including advertising, packaging, design and publishing.

She has illustrated many children’s book including Picture This, I Took the Moon for a Walk, Listen Listen, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Welcome to the Zoo. She was nominate for the Kate Greenaway prize for ‘Picture this” and won the Transworld Children’s book award in the AOI Images best of British illustration.

Alison’s wordless picture book “Welcome to the Zoo’ was selected by the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library as one of the books given to children in her Literary program.

In 2013 Alison’s book “The Cloud Spinner” by Michael Catchpool won the Santa Monica Green Prize in the youth picture book category .

Alison’s most exciting project was in 2014, she was asked by the Ghibli museum in Tokyo to include her art work from her picture book version of “The Nutcracker “in an exhibition with the Oscar winning director Hayao Miyazaki .She was flown over to Tokyo to see the exhibition, attend a press event and meet Hayao Miyazaki. The exhibition lasted for a year.

In 2016 inspired by the Ghibli animated films, Alison wrote and illustrated another wordless picture book “Bee and Me” which was nominated for the Kate Greenaway prize .

Since then Alison has illustrated books for several publishers including The Tiny Baker, written by Hayley Barret ,The Pig War, A Lady Has the Floor and more recently a companion book to Bee and Me called Tree and Me .

Alison works in Alkyd paint( quick drying oil paint) she sometimes then coats the illustration with layers of varnish to give an aged crackled effect.