Esther Kent

Illustrator: class of 2025

Esther Kent is an illustrator and designer living in Kinross. After working for several years in arts programming and bringing up her young children, Esther returned to making work that is often inspired by childhood memories and experiences and aims to make an emotional connection. She uses a blend of traditional and digital techniques to create illustrations and characters that tell stories, and enjoys writing texts that interact playfully with her images

Esther was mentored by Jill Calder

“Jill started by getting me to evaluate my work and think more deeply about the directions I  wanted to develop – a sort of reflection and objectivity that it’s easy to lose when working on  your own. I came to the mentorship with a picture book rough, and Jill and I focused on  developing both the story and artwork. Jill encouraged and challenged me to take my illustrations further, and helped me work through some issues I was having with style and technique, understanding ways to preserve my initial drawing and use Photoshop in a looser way. It was brilliant to have structure and accountability over the nine months. This pushed me to create a book concept which I’m really excited about and has developed both my illustration generally and my approach to making books in particular. Jill was such a warm, wise and generous mentor, and it was really brilliant to learn about her approaches to making books and some of her behind-the-scenes working process. We were able to meet online and in person, allowing for lots of enriching creative conversations on all sorts of subjects (and plenty of time for cake!). I’m so grateful to Jill and Picture Hooks – I feel like I’m starting the next working year turbo charged!” 

Photo by Zoe Barrie