Yorkshire artist turns a portrait tour into child's play

But now the acclaimed Yorkshire children's illustrator and author has been chosen by the National Portrait Gallery to sell highbrow art to young readers.

The writer, who lives in York, was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to create a set of original children's characters for the BP Portrait Award exhibition, running until September 19.

Mr Hopgood, 48, said: "I was surprised. It sort of came out the blue. I have always had an interest in drawing and painting. But it is quite a jump from working on picture books to getting people into a gallery."

He was given quite specific guidelines on developing a character to appeal to five to nine-years-olds as part of an attempt by the gallery to broaden its audience to include more family visitors.

He continued: "I was invited down to look at the paintings before they were hung and worked with the family programmes manager.

"So we looked at the paintings and what children would find interesting in the painting.

"So it was a bit like the way I would approach writing a story – thinking about trying to bring a bit of fun into the exhibition.

"My work features a lot of patterns so one thing we did was take the background out of a painting and ask the kids to find those patterns in the painting.

"I gather the gallery are working hard to broaden the appeal so they are doing a lot of workshops and free events and trying to get young families in."

He designed signs, and a trail through the exhibition with different things to do.

The gallery has also used his work on T-shirts bags, badges and other merchandise.

It is the latest chapter in an award-winning literary career which began when he decided to give up his successful 20-year career as an illustrator to follow his dream of producing picture books.

Formerly, he used to work for fashion magazines such as Tattler, and catalogues for Next and other High Street stores.

His job at that time was to come up for ideas for the pages, commission photographers, go on a shoot, and put the image with the type.

Moving to North Yorkshire eight years ago, Mr Hopgood, who lives with his wife and two grown-up children, became a full-time author in 2006.

Since then he has written and illustrated five books for Macmillan Children's Books

Although his illustrative style has vintage charm, his characters and their families are rooted in real up-to-date settings with adventures set in urban tower blocks and factory towns rather than rural farmyards

Critics say he has a natural grasp of how children and adults view the world differently, which was the central theme of his first three books. Our Big Blue Sofa won the 2007 Read it Again Cambridgeshire Picture Book Award.

Here Comes Frankie won the Book Trust Early Years Award for Best New Illustrator in 2008, and the following year Wow! Said the Owl was shortlisted for the Book Trust Best Pre-school Book.

Other works include A Dog Called Road, and – most recently – Tip Tap Went The Crab.

Jan Cullen, Family Programmes Manager at the National Portrait Gallery said: "We chose Tim Hopgood as we felt his style of illustration was fresh and appealing and would be a huge success with our target audience.

"We were impressed with his ideas on how families might engage with portraiture. He has been fantastic to work with and the results are amazing."

She said Mr Hopgood's unique illustrative style had bought a fresh approach to children's picture books.

By combining line drawings and multiple layers of painted colour he had created richly textured computer collages that had a natural hand-drawn feel to them, she added.

CHARACTER CREATION

Now in its 31st year, the BP Portrait Award, is one of UK's most prestigious international art prizes.

It is aimed at encouraging artists to focus upon, and develop, painted portraiture within their work.

Mr Hopgood has created a set of two children's characters – Tom and Lily – that will appear at the entrance to the exhibition and on labels around the show, highlighting paintings that are of particular interest to children.

The twin characters are central to the Gallery's free Family Trail programme – a specially-designed series of games and tours of the exhibition to encourage children and their families to engage with the paintings,have fun and get excited about portraiture.

Mr Hopgood and two supporting animators will also run the gallery's Moving Family Portraits event on Saturday, July 17 where children visiting the exhibition will be invited to create their own self-portrait.

The images will then be animated so that each blends seamlessly with the next to create a film of continually changing faces of everyone who takes part for showing on the Gallery's big screen at the end of the day.