Playing with Colour, Shape and Character

Anna Süßbauer grew up in Cologne and taught herself to draw. After working in web design and other roles, she established her illustration practice in 2017. She is now represented by an agency in the United Kingdom.

A childhood of pictures and stories

Anna grew up in a home filled with art books, picture books and comics. She loved both drawing and reading, and used her father’s typewriter to write her own stories, which she then illustrated.

She became fascinated by the way picture books and comics could tell stories through images, and wanted to do the same herself. Eric Carle, whose work she has loved since childhood, is among her artistic influences.

Characters with a sense of humour

A cucumber on roller skates. A strawberry wearing sunglasses. Anna’s characters often appear in unexpected guises, inspired by her fondness for silly jokes. If drawing a six-legged cucumber in a tiny hat makes her laugh, she hopes it will make someone else laugh too.

Animals are a recurring subject because she is drawn to their behaviour and the ways they communicate. She particularly enjoys how dogs express happiness with their whole bodies, and the individual sense of humour she finds in each one.

For a past 100-day project, she drew 100 dogs and gave each one a short poem. Rather than depicting different breeds, she allowed herself to invent unusual characters freely. She eventually collected them in a small book, which she gave to family, friends and colleagues.

Building pictures from shapes

Shape and texture are starting points for Anna’s work. The subject of an image emerges through the way shapes combine and move. She also enjoys looking at abstract paintings and sculptures, finding inspiration in their compositions and colours.

She begins with a very rough sketch, sometimes little more than a few lines that could fit on a sticky note, before moving quickly into colour. She draws digitally using a pen tablet.

Her favourite place to work is her tidy desk at home, where she keeps just a notebook and her tablet. Making personal illustrations between commissions also gives her a chance to unwind.

Making books and sharing her approach

Anna has illustrated picture books and board books for publishers in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and Spain, among other countries. Her magazine work also includes puzzle pages for children.

Alongside her own illustration work, she teaches others how to develop characters. In her online course, she demonstrates how to combine lines and shapes like building blocks, then add textures and unusual features to create characters for children’s books.