Well, I’ve been off maternity leave, freelancing part-time for the last three months, only to go back on it again… am delighted to be expecting my third baby in August. So, I will be continuing my casual approach to blogging for a while longer!

If you were thinking of contacting me for illustrations while I’m on maternity leave, I am referring my clients to Jason MacKay… he’s a talented digital illustrator with published children’s books under his belt, has a great style and work ethic… and he’s my brother, so I know him personally and recommend to anyone looking for illustrations!

This is your (belated) holiday card :) Hope you had a happy and safe holiday with your family and friends!

Was fun making Christmas Cards out of some of Hera’s old drawings, a great way to reuse them. Hera & I glued the drawings down onto cheap holiday cards from the dollar store, then once they were dry we cut them out and did potato stamps on them.

I’ve wanted to do this for years, and having a 3-year-old to do it with gave me the perfect excuse to have a go at making potato stamp holiday paper. Was an easy, quick craft… all you need is a small potato and knife to cut the pattern out of it, a little paint and a flat container to put it in, and large paper. We reused Hera’s old drawings, which added a quirky flare with creepy stick figures peeking through the trees! Hank was too busy practicing crawling up and down off the ottoman to join us ;)

I’ve just started working on illustrating and designing a new children’s book, eeeeeee! Now that the contract was signed, the deposit received, and I’m ready to put pencil to paper, and thought I’d share my process as it’s happening.

1) Setup :  30 minutes
• Printing out copy of contract
• Print out and fill out time sheet
• Print out manuscript
• Set up a folder on my laptop to organize files created and received along the way
2) Analyzing the story : 2 hours
• Reading through the story to determine how much text will go on each page
• Underline key visual imagery to be included in illustration mentioned in story
• Make notes for ideas for imagery I have while reading the story
• Sketch thumbnails of the layout with notes on rough concepts for each spread

3) Gathering Imagery : 30 minutes
• Using Google Images to find imagery to use as reference and inspiration

4) Preparing proof for author : 1 hour
• Scanned any thumbnails
• Created book layout in InDesign
• Inserted the text and scanned images into the layout according to my thumbnails
• Described each page on digital “sticky notes” on each page
• Emailed author a PDF proof of the concepts for review

Time spent so far : 3.5 hours
Materials : pen, 8 pieces of recycled printer paper, ipad, and InDesign on laptop.

Next up over the next couple weeks are more detailed sketches…

I had the pleasure of receiving the news that another one of my children’s books won a Mom’s Choice Award (will keep you in suspense as I get more details!) Shortly afterwards I started to receive emails from Terry Doherty, Director of New Media & Alumni Marketing, with tips on how to promote our books. This one focused on how accessible and up-to-dateyour online presence is.

The first thing Terry asked was “Have you visited your website today?” I hadn’t …being on maternity leave it isn’t high on my priority list between changing diapers and answering the non-stop questions my 3-year-old rattles off to me during the day!

But Terry, whose job was to connect my online presence with theirs, went on and wrote :

“Sometimes I get lucky and I find the buttons that will take me to other platforms, but I would have to say 70% of the time I end up having to log into each of those programs separately to discover that yes, you are on Facebook, use Twitter, have a YouTube channel, or have a blog.”

Several “observations” were also offered in this email… but I think they are more accurately described as big, black holes! The tips are so good I’ll quote them here :

• • “Check your dates. Website copyright dates of 2009 and “coming fall 2010” for your next book send the message “this website isn’t maintained.”
• • Check your links. If you’ve changed your website or blog host, make sure your links still work and that your RSS feed goes to the new blog.
• • Check your message. Do the blurbs about your product say different things? Does the data on your website match up with the details on a seller site? is your message consistent?
• • Connect with your partners. Do you have links to the website and/or blog of your collaborators or producers (e.g., publisher, illustrator, manufacturer)? Do they work?
• • Is your news up to date? If the last “public event” on your website calendar is a year old, but you’ve got an event next week, who’s gonna know?
• • Ditto interviews and special features … people want to see reviews, interviews, demos, etc. that are recent.”

Terry finished with a statement that made me set aside the last hour updating this blog…

“It is my job to do that legwork and dig down into the pages of your website and search your name, product name, producer, and collaborator on every platform individually. It takes me about an hour per honoree to do that. Do you want your potential customers to work that hard? “

Has been a while since I’ve posted… still loving being off on maternity leave, my kids are keeping me busy! Halloween is around the corner… paper bats, kleenex ghosts, and paper mache pumpkins adorn our windows… and here in South Australia spring has sprung and the birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and the leaves are GROWING BACK! So it’s a bit weird having Halloween in the spring, but hey, we’ll have fun anyway!

Had a little time to turn one of my watercolours into a colouring page for Hera, thought I’d share! (Just right click to view full sized image, and save from there to your desktop.) I enjoyed using my ipad to vectorize (digitally trace!) this illustration in InkPad using my new rubber-tipped stylus I picked up for 50 cents on eBay.

(Please keep in mind this colouring page is for personal use only, the original illustration is from my royalty-free seasons collection and is available at Imagezoo.com.)

Hey guys, unashamedly asking for some Likes on this photo of my humble workplace up on ImageZoo’s Facebook page! If I get the most Likes I’ll get a lovely prize for having the coolest workplace among my colleagues with illustrations available at ImageZoo.com! Just click on this specific photo, and Like it before Friday when the contest ends… thanks!!!

I’m excited to announce that four of my illustrations are now available as royalty-free illustrations on ImageZoo.com! I did these watercolours nine months ago, right before Hank was born. You can check them out, along with the rest of my illustrations available royalty-free at ImageZoo.

I was saying to my husband recently I wish I had more time to draw… and he suggested just setting up next to Hera on the kitchen table and drawing together, even if it’s only a few minutes. I’ve been really enjoying it, and Hera especially enjoyed drawing the same thing… I took one of her drawings of our car, made copies, and she and I both coloured it in. (Similar to what I did with Ugly Mermaids.) Was fun, looking forward to doing it again!

BTW, a few have asked how Hank’s doing… really great :) At nine months old, he’s just under 7kg now, a smiley happy little guy, and sitting up (with a few pillows propped up around!) He has started crying “Mmmmmuuum!!!” when he’s upset.

Lately I haven’t had much time for illustrating, as being a mum of two little kids takes up all my spare time. I’m enjoying the occasional creative outlet with drawing things for my daughter to colour… mainly her riding on dragons and dinosaurs!
I did manage to squeeze in this illustration… I was inspired a while back by Dave DeVries illustrations derived from his children’s artwork, and thought it would be fun to give it a go! A few months back Hera suddenly learned how to draw “people” and I ended up with a stack of paper full of families of people with arms and legs freely growing out of their heads… couldn’t let them go to waste! So I traced one, used the head shape, mouth & eyes, arms & legs as the basis for my pencil drawing “Ugly Mermaids.” I then gave it a little colour using my iPad with a Dagi Stylus and Sketchbook Pro. Hera’s original drawing is shown at left. Hope to do more of these, they were fun… am currently working on illustrating the drawing Hera drew of me having my birthday ;)