A few years ago, Angela Buckingham contacted me out of the blue to say she like my illustrations and would I be interested in working with her on an idea she had? That idea turned out to be a series of 10 stories, written from real life, about actual princesses who bravely fought for survival against all odds.

We have had an interesting time working on this book and an even more interesting, if harder time, selling the idea. Twice we took it to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, polishing and reshaping it constantly. We listened to lots of reasons why it was unpublishable—too long, too many difficult words, too traditional and not nearly cartoonish enough; fortunately, we didn’t believe them. We believed instead in the principle that children, particularly girls, need strong ideas with strong heroes and role-models; stories to aspire to; people to look up to.

Women’s history was side-lined for centuries till girls believed that a female role was a passive role; that princesses wore pink and meekly awaited their fate. Nothing could be further from the truth. Women have always fought—they had to; girls should celebrate their history and follow in their footsteps.

Below are some images that show the progression of our ideas.

This was the first sample piece to show the illustrations style and treatment of the historical character, costume, drawing style etc. My intention is always to bring my people to life; to make them as historically accurate as possible and imbue them with a spirit that makes them wholly believable. Aud is an older
woman but still the leader of her people and she saves her community from annihilation despite great personal loss.

I depicted her full length on the page with an exaggerated pose and slightly altered perspective using the visual language of super-hero comics. The background is kept minimal so as not to detract from her strength—the figure must be the ‘hero’ of the composition.

Our second princess was a Chinese warrior princess. At this point we were keeping the overall design of the book fluid—it could be one book featuring 10 princesses or it could be 10 books each featuring one—the final decision would belong to the publisher who ultimately bought it.

Ping Yang seemed to require more action and movement so I produced two images complete with flying pennants and members of her army. I am always careful to research textiles and armour and even colour—only a member of the Imperial Family was allowed to wear yellow on pain of death. Each princess has her own colour—Aud is red depicting her place in her community as well as available dyes, Elizabeth wears the Tudor green, Noor’s favourite colour was blue, and so on.

Five Mile

By this time Powerful princesses had been picked up by Five Mile Publishing in Australia with a very short deadline (3 months) which only allowed one major piece per princess supported by a vignette or border. Our goal remained to keep the pages clean and bold with each princess the strongest feature of the spread. The layouts and typography shown here were created by our very own designer Danny Nanos who had worked on this book from its inception.

It was a difficult birth but we are pleased to see the book on the market and hope very much that it sells as Angela would love to follow it up with Queens and even Pirates.

Design

We had very strong views as to the design of our book right from the start and though our initial designs sold the book the reality of working with all publishers is compromise. There was talk at the beginning of collaboration but ultimately the final design is the result of the struggle to maintain our vision overridden by a designer with different aims. The images below illustrates our aesthetic as opposed theirs and the compromise reached between us—because at the end of the day we are professionals who wanted very much to make this important book work.

Angela felt we owed it to girls everywhere to feature as diverse a group of women as she could and there are 2 princesses from the African continent—one a warrior, the other a teacher so as not to be accused of stereotyping black women. Nzinga is shown in full battle mode urging her men into battle.

Not all of our princesses took up weapons—Elizabeth Tudor had only her wits and education to help her survive in a court where her life was in constant danger. Her pose therefore is passive but her expression shows the bravery of her inner struggle.