Cirrus@Austlit

Graeme Base came to Australia with his parents in 1966 at the age of eight. He attended Melbourne High School and from about the age of twelve he knew that he wanted to be a commercial artist. He studied graphic design at Swinburn College of Technology for three years and then joined the advertising world, creating newspaper advertisements, a job that he loathed. In his spare time Base did some freelance work for book publishers, illustrating book jackets and building up a portfolio.

His first publication was a book in verse with illustrations, My Grandma Lives in Gooligulch published in 1983. This was followed by perhaps his best known and most successful work, Animalia (1986) which gained him significant international attention and for which the illustrations took three years to complete. Over two million copies of this alphabet book have been printed world-wide. In 1987 it won several awards including being named an Honour Book in the Children's Book Council of Australia awards. The Eleventh Hour an illustrated mystery in verse which appeared in 1988 drew on his ideas collected in the game parks of Kenya and Tanzania. The clues to solve the mystery posed by the story are all to be found in the detailed illustrations.

One of Base's other great loves is music and he played drums before moving on to keyboard in a band called Rikitikitavi - the name was inspired by, although differently spelled from, Rudyard Kipling's mongoose. In 1999 he combined illustrating and music to produce The Worst Band in the Universe, which contained a CD of songs by entrants in the Worst Band in the Universe competition. Among his other publications are Days of the Dinosaurs (1985) a calendar titled Dragons, Draaks and Beasties which he followed up with The Discovery of Dragons in 1996. The Waterhole (2001) is a counting book in the style of Animalia with a similar level of illustrative detail. Base works in watercolours and transparent inks, but not oils, using whatever tools are necessary to create the effects he strives for.