Corneille Noeli

“I draw and write children’s story boards using a variety of art & design tools such as water colours, highlighters, pencils and fineliner pens. My storylines mostly come from my childhood memories and experience. As a young boy growing up, I used to watch a lot of cartoons and enjoyed reading funny books from my local library.

From early on in primary school, my interest in children’s art books and colourful drawings never stopped growing. With my teachers’ help and encouragement, I started drawing and creating my own stories using a storyboard format.

At the age of 11, I compiled my first structured storyboard on a duck character which was later shown to the school assembly. What was a fun thing back then steadily gathered pace. With the applause I received from the school, I began to focus more and more on art and drew even more. This first attempt has stayed with me all along. The duck is now present in all my works in the shape of a logo with my initials (CN studios) inside it.

As a child, I used to draw a lot of boxes in a grid and labelled them accordingly from 1 to tens using each square box to represent a scene. As I moved to secondary school later, despite the focus on academic skills, I continued with my drawings in my spare time at home. One of my favourite lessons was drama. I particularly enjoyed any performance which depicted children’s scenes or character plays. Some of these characters are also present in my drawings today.

Moving on to do Art & Design at Oaklands College was a natural and logical step. I had a fantastic team of lecturers and teachers who helped me refine and master drawing techniques.

I chose a children’s audience for my first major assignment at level 3 which landed me my first Merit for the course. Looking back, I think I only expressed what has always been my passion: to tell a simple children’s story with pencils. There is nothing that drives me more…

My drawing style is simple, abstract and very expressive on my characters’ faces. I also use bright colours. This is something that underpins my way of drawing. Most of my work tries to catch children’s imagination with a message of someone special always being there for them, friends and family.

As a first storybook to be published, I chose the Magic Land. It is a fun story of 3 school friends with an enigma to solve. I hope the public but mostly children enjoy!”