Meet the author

David Rooney.

Illustrator · Ireland

David Rooney is an Irish scraperboard illustrator whose spare, atmospheric line brings mood and landscape to verse novels such as Eilish Fisher's The Waters and the Wild.

David Rooney is an Irish illustrator and artist based in Dublin, with more than thirty years' experience since graduating from the National College of Art and Design. He is best known for his atmospheric work in scraperboard, an engraving technique in which the image is scratched out of black ink to reveal the white beneath, giving his art a distinctive, hand-hewn depth. Alongside editorial and heritage commissions, including illustration for the BBC series The Story of Ireland, he brings that spare, luminous line to children's books such as The Waters and the Wild, Eilish Fisher's verse novel about grief, family and the pull of an old place. His illustration suits stories with a strong sense of landscape and mood, quiet, textured and steeped in atmosphere.