BATSFORD PRIZE ARTIST INTERVIEW: WILL KNIGHT
We’re delighted to be speaking with Batsford Prize 2025 Children’s Illustration winner Will Knight! We chat to him about his artwork and the ideas behind it.
CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE MORE ABOUT YOUR PIECE THE HOUSE DRAGON? WHAT IS IT YOU’RE TRYING TO SAY WITH YOUR WORK AND DOES THE FINAL PIECE DIFFER FROM THE ORIGINAL IDEA?
I actually stole the idea from my son, who was four at the time. He looked up at a palm frond overlapping our bungalow roof and said, “housedragon!” I was captivated by the idea of a house that was a dragon and thought, “I’ll have that…”
Years later, I developed the story as part of my MA in Children’s Picture Books at Cambridge School of Art, aiming to create a fun, exciting adventure with emotional resonance. What emerged reflects my own childhood growing up in Africa with books instead of TV, and later at a UK boarding school trapped in time. In both places, I found safety in stories and dens – especially the ones I made myself.
While The HouseDragon is a playful and imaginative picturebook for children, it also explores how storytelling can offer protection, strength, and hope. As I followed the characters in creating their journey, I realised the story offered something deeply personal and true: stories can shelter us.
The piece touches on the power of story as a kind of shelter. Beneath its playful surface, The HouseDragon gently nods to themes of displacement, safety, and resilience, even hinting at the scars of bomb-damaged homes. I’ve tried to make that idea concrete, fun and playful in this story – offering young readers not just an adventure, but a sense of a magical, imaginative refuge they might carry with them.
WHO ARE YOUR PARTICULAR ARTIST INSPIRATIONS AND WHAT MOTIVATES YOU CREATIVELY?
If I really had to choose it would be the characters of Calvin and Hobbes for the unbreakable bond of trust that allows them to go anywhere together. There’s something deeply powerful and moving in that relationship, while Bill Watterson’s delicious inkwork transmogrifies their tiny 2 x 2.5 inch panels into portals of fun and possibility.
When it comes to my ‘inputs’, I think that my upbringing makes me a good candidate for what someone once called “flat horizon theory”: that when there’s not a lot to look at, your imagination spills out to fill the space. As kids we’d watch the same Bollywood film on repeat on the days that we had electricity, and a rolled up Beano would arrive once a month on a very good month. These days ‘creativity’ leaks out of its own accord – typically causing a bit of a mess – and just like my childhood, space, scarcity and silence are the elements that permit me to mop up and distill these juices most usefully.
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS AFTER YOU COMPLETE YOUR STUDIES?
I arrived into my MA on the back of twenty five years visualising other people’s ideas, drawing and ‘rendering’ as fast as humanly possible, within the relative safety of felt-tip pens and photoshop. The course has completely reset my modes of working, shifting me from line to shape, pen to paint, digital to analogue, planned precision to celebrated surprise, and most significantly from rushing to complete to dwelling in some places, and letting go in others. So most of all I am looking forwards to carrying these new ways of working forwards into the development of a small number of new projects that I am exploring.
WHAT LED YOU TO CREATE THIS PIECE IN THIS PARTICULAR MEDIUM?
The HouseDragon as a picturebook is still very much a work in progress, and the look of the latest version reflects deadlines that forced me back into the computer and some old skills. My initial artistic goals were to produce something more painterly than that of my previous commercial art. I’ve also been trying to relinquish my grip on pre-formed ideas and embrace wet materials in a more collaborative way, whilst inviting colour in to play for the first time.
Reflecting on this, ink has been the most rewarding partner, revealing its instinctive understanding of the story’s moods and movement. Colour however, remains a nervous creature – around which I still can’t make any sudden moves.
WHY DID YOU WANT TO STUDY CHILDRENS BOOK LLUSTRATION AND WHAT IS IT ABOUT YOUR COURSE THAT YOU THINK IS PARTICULARLY UNIQUE?
As a maker of ‘things’ I wanted to better understand picturebooks, and as someone who regretted never doing an art foundation course I wanted to return to and learn about all (well at least some of) the traditional mark making that I had missed.
One of the wonderful things about picture books is their apparent simplicity—anyone can make one if they really want to. But telling a compelling, emotionally resonant story within the classic 12-spread format is really tricky! I certainly had not fully appreciated this before enrolling on the course.
What makes the MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art so special is how brilliantly it’s designed. It peels back the layers of the picturebook making process with perfect timing, revealing the inner workings of the form while forever singing out the possibilities. I went in looking for mechanics, and left with all of that plus a good taste of magic.
WHAT DOES WINNING THE BATSFORD PRIZE MEAN TO YOU?
You only have to quickly scroll through Instagram to see how much incredible illustration and visual storytelling is out there. So for The HouseDragon to be picked out by the Batsford Prize feels especially meaningful. I’m deeply grateful to all involved for the platform on which this project can be seen.
It is also a hugely encouraging nudge to keep going. I plan to continue developing The HouseDragon, not only as a picture book, but also exploring other forms where the story might thrive, like graphic novels, animation, or maybe even something else. Winning the Batsford Prize is both a moment to celebrate, and a starting point, and I’m excited to see where it leads.
IF YOU COULD HAVE CHOSEN THE THEME FOR THIS YEAR’S BATSFORD PRIZE, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE CHOSEN AND WHY?
I’d have chosen the theme “Thriving Through Technology”—partly because I love alliteration, and partly because one of my other MA projects is a book about a child and a robot. (And yes, I’d have loved to enter that too – just kidding… sort of!)
While we have good reason to worry about the impact of technology on our children’s prospects, I strongly feel that we must also help them imagine its potential for good. By exploring more balanced and symbiotic relationships between people and technology (especially in fun and playful ways!) we could encourage hope, creativity, and ease some of those fears too!
