Bridget George is an Anishinaabe author and illustrator from Kettle and Stony Point First Nation. Her work includes The Tragically Hip ABC and Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior. George’s debut picture book, It’s a Mitig!, won the 2021-2022 PMC Indigenous Literature Award. Her latest picture book, The Animal People Choose a Leader (Douglas & McIntyre, out now) brings Richard Wagamese’s posthumous tale to life.

What sparked your interest in illustration?
What really pulled me into illustration as a career is the way that I’m able to let my creativity exist and take everything over. I’m definitely a visual thinker, and I love being able to just let my imagination go. Working with children’s books, I’ve found, is a really great way to keep me connected with my inner child, and to explore that part of myself that I think a lot of people are disconnected from as we become adults. 

Who or what has been a major influence on your illustrating style?
Initially my biggest inspiration came from animation. I would look at animated movies and TV shows, and for a while, when I was first getting into illustration, I was buying all of the books that I could possibly find on the making of the art for every single animated movie I loved. I was completely taken with how they would go from an idea to developing it over time into a finished movie. And then I fell in love with the way animators do character design. So, I would watch behind-the-scenes videos of how they would create characters. I still use some of those techniques to create characters for picture books. That’s more of a style inspiration. When it comes to content, I am forever inspired by the natural world around me. Since I’ve become a parent, I’ve found myself working really hard to reconnect with my ancestral language. As I’ve learned my language, I find that my people have a really unique way of looking at the world. Everything has a place and everything has purpose beyond just what it is when you look at it. Looking at the world with such a deep lens comes into my art because I like to create the feeling of magic that comes from learning my language. 

Did you know from the outset that you wanted to illustrate children’s books?
I actually didn’t know that I wanted to illustrate children’s books. I have an advanced diploma in graphic design. I’d always been very artsy, and I always loved drawing and painting, but to be honest, I never thought I would be able to do illustration as a career, so I set it aside as more of a hobby. Then, when I was creating my first book, It’s a Mitig!, I was like, “You know what? I’m just gonna shoot my shot, and I’m going to include samples of my illustration work. If they like it, that’s great and if they like the words but don’t like my illustrations, that’s fine.” Once it came out, other publishers started contacting me about illustrating books for other authors. So it kind of found me.

What is your medium of choice?
I love to work digitally on an iPad with Procreate. Sometimes I switch back and forth between that and a Wacom tablet and Photoshop, but I’m primarily working on my iPad.

Are there any media you haven’t tried that you’d like to?
I have been doing a lot of mixed media in my sketchbook lately. I’ve been playing with watercolour, gouache, pencil crayon, and pastel all together. I really like the level of texture; it takes the different textures and style of my digital work and multiplies it by 10, because you get all of these unique little edges to everything. It’s messy in a way that you can’t really create digitally. I would love to illustrate a book using traditional mixed media.

What did it mean to you to illustrate Richard Wagamese’s posthumous children’s book?
Oh my gosh, when Douglas & McIntyre initially reached out to me, I sat there with the email for a really long time because I was like, “that’s crazy.” When I started, I didn’t think that illustrating professionally would be possible for me, and to illustrate Richard’s work, of all people, is such an incredible honour. When you think of Anishinaabe voices, Richard is always the first person that comes to mind. I just can’t believe that I even got the chance to create illustrations for his voice at all. It was truly such a dream.

What do you do to nurture your passion for illustration?
When I feel I need an extra little boost of inspiration or if I’m experiencing a creative block, one of my favourite things to do is to just spend time outside with my son. He is five years old, and a lot of what I love about what I do is connecting with my inner child. Children see the world in such a beautiful way, and I like to watch how he interacts with things. When we’re going for a walk, he will stop, and he will look at the way the grass grows, and he will ask me questions about why it does that.

If you could illustrate any classic children’s book, which would it be, and why?
I would really love to do Little Red Riding Hood in the style that I did Animal People, with a lot of woodland florals and putting an Indigenous spin on it. I think that would be so fun.

Read Q+As with Julie Morstad and Salini Perera.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photo Credit: Bridget George.