Wondering how to get started with drawing?
Drawing exercises can be a great way to get started with drawing. Sometimes the ideas that come from fun and doodling can be surprising.
character
Central Character Energy
Getting to know the central character of a picture book, their clothes and props, is a huge leap forward in developing a picture book.
My Most Recent Book
Teddy is the second book in a series of three. They all feature greyhounds but they are beautiful stories about friendship and acceptance.
New book on the way!
Tomorrow is the publication day for this lovely picture book celebrating some of the heroes of the catastrophic bush fires that took place in Australia early in 2020. I’m really proud to have illustrated this book, especially as it’s so local. It was a super fast deadline but fortunately there were no compromises and the …
Digital fun
Yesterday I had the absolute joy of experimenting and getting to grips with photoshop. I was motivated to reproduce a pop-up piece I did for The 52 Week Illustration Challenge last year. It came together surprisingly quickly.
The Anti-Advent Calendar progress
Day 3 and 4. Happy Christmas!
New book on the way
This week I’ve been working on Naomi Hunter‘s new book. If you know her first picture book you’ll know that she doesn’t shy away from tackling the big issues. This one is about parenting and depression. Which sounds very sad, but it’s a book full of hope. It’s beautifully written and I really hope the pictures …
The Anti-advent Calendar!
If you’ve heard of anti-colouring books you’ll get this. I’ve never given my kids advent calendars with chocolate in them, firstly because I’m a really mean old cow of a Mother, but also because book illustration doesn’t pay much and dentistry isn’t covered by health funds or the state in Australia. But that’s a different …
Playtime!
I’ve had a day day of messing around and experimenting. I listened to a gorgeous podcast interview between Wil Anderson and Bryony Kimmings yesterday (Wilsophy). She said something fabulous about being an artist, something along the lines of not understanding why artists are so self important and claim that making art so so hard…..it’s not …
Thumb Blister!
The 52 Week Illustration Challenge continues! I’m enjoying it so much and my books of pop-ups are growing every week. This is Week 29 ‘Love’ Week 3 ‘Retro’ The inspiration for this was 50s dress pattern covers. i’m not sure it’s very successful because it was hurried a bit. This is today’s effort. Week …
Sketchbook Project time again.
Two years ago I had heaps of fun putting together a pop-up sketchbook. This year I went through a bunch of fancy ideas involving the Shark cull cause and then taking sentences from a novel. But it was all too hard and I wasn’t getting on with it. So I’ve gone with the self-indulgent theme …
Whiplash!
I thought I’d go for a dramatic title. You never know, it might generate more hits. I think the majority of those hits will probably be hugely disappointed though….. I swear I don’t know what happened this summer. A series of gorgeous days out and trips to the beach, and its all over. Christmas came …