The Enid Blyton Society

The Secret Island - Janet White Watercolours circa 1949

Of course E.H. Davie illustrated this book,but you may be interested to see what the illustrations would look like in watercolour.
I think Janet did a rather good job - see what you think?

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They really are very professionally painted! I like them much better than the officially coloured Eileen Soper illustrations that appeared a few years back!

Pete, this young girl did a lovely job of colouring this book.

I must admit I always coloured in my books that had black & white illustrations. I thought we were meant to do that, that they were left uncoloured for us to colour them in. And I believed my colouring in made them better. But I have to say, tonight looking at my Folk of the Faraway Tree book (that I coloured in 1952) Janet makes my colouring in look rather sad.

But lovely memories.

Sue

They are nicely and neatly coloured. Most of my Sunny Stories magazines were belonged to Margaret Maddock. Like Janet, she was also a very good painter. In one of the competition form, she had written 10 years old in one of the early 1940s magazine. She must be well into 80 years old if she's still alive.

I must admit I coloured in some of my books as a child too - but with rather garish felt pens - not half as good as Janet did - and the felt pens usually seeped through and stained the back of the page! I even wrote 'Now in full colour!' at the front of one of my books. I always thought I was improving them!

I think coloured in illustrations aren't too bad a thing personally. Especially when they are done so well as Janet did them. It shows how much Janet loved the book - because she loved it so much she wanted to 'own it' and be a part of it. That's how I always look on coloured-in illustrations - they are a sign of the child wanting to contribute to the book and experience it in a deeper way than just reading it.

I don't mind buying books with illustrations that have been coloured by the children especially if they were done nicely like Janet's case. But I do mind books with scribbles.

Wow! They look super professional. I think it adds something nice to the book when done well.

They really are very well done! Mind you, I'm glad our parents brought us up with the strict rule that books were NOT for scribbling on or colouring in (unless they were specifically marked as colouring-in books)... I doubt my childhood artistic talents would have done classic illustrations any credit!!

I was brought up by my parents to treat books that way, too - and I knew that only colouring pages and colouring books should be coloured in...it obviously didn't stop me, although I only have maybe three or four books from my childhood that have illustrations coloured in.

Here's a sample of my colouring for 'The Folk of the Faraway Tree' - aged about 8 or 9 I should think. Not half as good as Janet's though.

Rob Houghton wrote: Here's a sample of my colouring for 'The Folk of the Faraway Tree' - aged about 8 or 9 I should think. Not half as good as Janet's though.

Ooh, I dunno — the blood on the spear tips is pretty cool.

lol! Don't know what I was thinking there!

I also just noticed that my characters change their hair colour from picture to picture!

Rob Houghton wrote: I also just noticed that my characters change their hair colour from picture to picture!

Really? I thought that they were swapping their clothes.

Courtenay wrote:Ooh, I dunno — the blood on the spear tips is pretty cool.

Rob Houghton wrote:lol! Don't know what I was thinking there!

I'm not sure we want to know either.