About John Patience - author and illustrator of children's books

John Patience self portrait
John Patience
Born 1949 in Lancashire, England.

I studied at the Harris College in Preston, Lancashire where I trained as a book designer and typographer.

I began my career working as a book designer for a number of publishers in London, but my real interest was always children’s literature. My dream to write and illustrate stories for children came to fruition at the age of 30 when my first book was published. Since then I have written and/or illustrated over 100 original stories, pop-up books and retellings of classic fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, for publishers in the UK, USA and Australia. My books have been published around the world and translated into many languages. I am perhaps best known for my Tales from Fern Hollow series which continues to have a strong following and about which I continue to receive fan mail.

Aside from illustration, I also enjoy producing digital sculptures using the excellent ZBrush digital sculpting tool by Pixologic. Some of my digital sculpts have been brought to physical reality via the magic of 3D printing!

I have a large catalogue of children's books (both stories and illustrations) available for licensing. Individual pieces of artwork are also available for licensing for merchandise etc.. Please contact me as shown below if you are interested in acquiring a licence to publish my work or to use it for other products.

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