Sian Bowman Illustrates Winnie the Pooh: Five Little Bees
After the successful collaboration on Disney Stitch Five Little Aliens with Studio Press, Sian Bowman, takes on an exciting new challenge of illustrating an all-time favourite character of many, Winnie the Pooh.
Sian shares with us how exciting it has been for her to illustrate Winnie the Pooh, Five Little Bees:
“My love for Pooh bear comes from early memories, listening to the tales by A. A. Milne, watching the Disney films and in recent years sharing all these things again with my children. And seeing the characters fresh through an adult lense, what can seem so simple is ‘just so’ capturing a feeling in words and lines.
I wanted my Illustrations to have a nod to E. H. Shepard's expressive lines and leave areas that are undefined to leave room for the mind to linger and make up. I tried to balance subtly with bold block colour, so the characters are defined and expressive and true to the way they are depicted in the films. I poured over the original map created by E. H. Shepard and tried to be true geographically to the original in my Illustration, for example if you take a look at the last party scene from Pooh’s Garden in the background we can see Roo and Kangas house above, the picnic area further back and to the right and then further right we can see the Bee Tree.
The process of creating the work for Stitch and Pooh has been a period of discovery for me. As when I initially started working on Stitch with Studio Press I wondered if by emulating a character it would still look like my hand. Even from creating the first sample, I thought right well I’ll start at the beginning and copy the character and strangely it did still feel like there was a part of me in it. It made me think about something I heard Jake Parker talk about on the ‘Three Point Perspective Podcast’, style isn’t just about the character you create it is the pressure you use in your line, the way you gravitate towards mark making, your approach to composition and perspective and of-course the elements you play with in storytelling. So for me this project has been a dream come true, to have been given the opportunity to share a little of myself to celebrate these incredible stories we all hold so dear.”
Winnie the Pooh, Five Little Bees will be released on March 12th 2026, and is available now for pre-order via this link.
If you’d like to work with Sian, please contact: [email protected]
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