Shirley Hughes Sketchbook Award launches with £1k prize

Author and illustrator Shirley Hughes’ family is partnering with children’s book tutoring organisation Orange Beak Studio to launch the annual Shirley Hughes Sketchbook Award.

The prize will celebrate Hughes’ work and "honour observational drawings of the every day". It has been created to reward illustrators for the work that goes towards making children’s books.

The winner will receive £1,000 plus an Orange Beak tutorial, with a runner-up prize of £200 and a tutorial, and a highly commended prize of a tutorial. The competition will run from 9th February until 10th June 2024, and a longlist of 15 entries will be announced at the end of June. The winner will be revealed on 16th July 2024, on what would have been Hughes’ 97th birthday. 

The award will be judged by Hughes’ children—Clara, Tom and Ed Vulliamy—as well as the Orange Beak team of author and illustrator Maisie Paradise Shearring, and Ness Wood, Hughes’ long-time designer at Penguin Random House Children’s Books, as well as a guest judge. The judges will be looking for sketchbook observations of real life and Clara, Ness and Maisie will launch the award at a virtual event on 8th February.

Wood and Shearring, co-founders of Orange Beak Studio, said: “We’re proud to be running an award that celebrates sketchbooks, at Orange Beak we always advocate the importance of sketchbook work and drawing to help towards illustration development. Beautifully observed drawings were also at the heart of Shirley’s books, and so this feels like the perfect pairing!”

Vulliamy added: “Together with my brothers Ed and Tom, we are thrilled to be launching this award, bringing together the Shirley Hughes legacy with the impressive expertise of Orange Beak Studio. Observational drawing—lightning-quick sketches, full of expression, humour and life—was the heart and soul of Mum’s work. And not only that; sitting with her sketchbook, preferably in a sunny spot, she was at her very happiest. It’s wonderful to think of passing on the baton to a new generation of illustrators.”