Cambridge-based illustrator Liz Anelli has been named the 2025 recipient of the Shirley Hughes Sketchbook Award.
This international competition and award, in celebration of the late author/illustrator Shirley Hughes, honours observational drawings of the everyday, shining a light on images that reflect the seemingly humdrum reality of day-to-day life.
On Wednesday, 16 July, which would have been Shirley Hughes’ 98th birthday, Liz’s Instagram feed was full of messages of congratulations as the announcement of her win was made public by Orange Beak Studio – an award-winning team of children’s book creatives.
The team said that “the judges were very inspired by the work and felt it was just as Shirley would have used her sketchbooks when researching for the characters and moments in her books”.
Liz, who won £1,000 and an Orange Beak tutorial, responded by saying: “Winning this award feels like a personal pat on the back from my inspiration and hero, Shirley herself, and I am totally delighted. Thank you!
“Drawing is my lifelong friend, my comfort and my career. To capture one moment of somebody else’s life in pencil gives me a thrill of excitement and connection.
“Never impertinent, it is my way of caring for the world. Sketchbooks are simply the best accessories to happiness.”
Liz, a member of Cambridge Open Studios, tells the Cambridge Independent: “I’ve always been a real fan of drawing and I’ve always gone out with my sketchbooks, but it’s mostly been just something I did for myself.
“So when I saw this award, I thought, ‘Hey, I’ll have a go at that’.
“But to get the accolade of actually winning, out of all the however many hundreds and thousands of people who entered, it’s like saying, ‘Yeah, you are doing the right thing’.”
Liz, who is originally from Essex – she later moved to Market Harborough in the Midlands – notes that she has always had a passion for drawing in sketchbooks and reveals that there’s a “ceiling-high stack of them” in her studio.
“I’m sitting next to them now,” she says. “I’ve got a bookcase that goes up to the ceiling, and it’s packed full of sketchbooks from right back from when I was a student, because you keep them all because they’re like diaries.”
Upon leaving school, Liz went on to do an art foundation course in Colchester.
“They were very keen on drawing there so that’s when I really got the drawing bug,” she recalls, “but I probably had been doing that ever since I could hold a pencil really…”
When did she realise she had the talent required to draw professionally?
“I think when I was at art school,” replies Liz. “I did a graphic design illustration degree back in the 1980s and you have what’s called a degree show at the end, where your work is assessed.
“A book publisher came to our degree show and actually optioned one of my ideas, my picture book dummy that I’d got there to be assessed for my degree, and that did get published a couple of years later.”
Liz uses the sketchbooks for experimentation in her studio, but more often than not is out and about cycling around Cambridge – to where she and her husband moved in 2022 after 10 years living in Australia – to find “interesting places and people to draw”.
Her work was very successful in Australian publishing but coming back to England meant starting all over again when it came to making professional connections.
“That’s where my career really took off actually,” says Liz of her Antipodean odyssey. “I got a lot of work illustrating books and I won quite a few prizes over there in Australia.”
She adds: “Living in Cambridge is really wonderful. It has so many art galleries and museums and places to explore and be inspired by that it’s a great place for an artist to live.
“And also I’ve got myself an allotment, so I do a lot of vegetable growing and mixing with other people who like vegetable growing, which makes me very happy!”
For more Liz, go to lizanelli-illustration.com. Follow her on Instagram at @lizanelli.
