His work, characteristically executed with bright watercolour paint and pen and ink, is recognisable by an anarchic yet detailed style and for its "wild characterisation".

[1] Paul was born in 1951 into a family of seven children in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) where he had what he calls "a wild and privileged childhood" in the African Bushveld.

In 1986, Paul met the editor, Ron Heapy, at Oxford University Press, who looked at his work and commissioned him to draw several pictures for a short book about a witch written by Valerie Thomas as part of OUP's Reading Tree programme.

"[1] Three of Paul's picture books have been adapted for CD-ROM; The Fish Who Could Wish which won the European Multi-Media Award (EMMA) in 1995,[8] Dragon Poems and Winnie the Witch.

[6] Describing the technical details of his work he says: "I use an Apple Mac, Schminke watercolours, Caran d'Ache pencil crayons (with electric sharpener), Saunders Waterford paper 190gm3 [sic], black kandahar and coloured inks with a dip pen, toothbrush, porcupine quills, and my trusty left hand.