My apologies for not posting much this month… I’ve been a bit swamped with moving house, am going on vacation in a week, and am busily working on a two children’s books and a potato chip bag illustration this month… phew! One of the storybooks I’m illustrating is about one of my favourite animals… red-eared sliders! My brothers & sister and & used to catch these turtles when we were kids, and loved feeding them worms & bugs. Currently the author is deciding between pencil & digital colour, or acrylic for the medium of the story… these are my colour samples for her to choose from before I proceed with the finals.

I’ve just finished the illustrations for Elizabeth Austin’s children’s book, The Brotherhood of the Stinky Underpants! Once the illustrations have been reviewed and any minor changes have been made, I’ll go into Photoshop and colour correct the high-res illustrations so the type is easier to read in areas before sending the print-ready files to the publisher.

Today is Roald Dahl Day! So pull out that copy of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” or if you’re in the UK, visit the Roald Dahl Museum, to honor this cherished author. A very happy 91st birthday to the late Roald Dahl, my favourite childhood author! His stories, which to my delight featured naughty children getting their cummupits by all sorts of hilarious methods, really light up the imagination and bring a lot of joy when reading them. I still enjoy reading his stories, in particular his witty conversations, imaginative characters, and crazy things (like boggie tasting snozzcumbers.) My favourite of his stories are a tossup between The BFG, The Witches, and The Twitts.

Roald Dahl gave to various charities while he was alive, and The Roald Dahl foundation (UK based) carries on that spirit by “providing practical support for children with brain, blood and literacy problems.” Even after he has passed, Roald Dahl is still giving to children.

Roald Dahl’s stories were visually brought to life by Quentin Blake (who has a really fun & interactive website btw!) I attempted once or twice to illustrate in his ink & watercolour style… it’s really brilliant because it looks easy to do, but it is actually quite difficult to control the ink in such a way that it looks messy & loose, but still expresses exactly what you want the characters to look like. I kept stuffing it up, thank goodness for a little Photoshop to help erase the big blobs of ink that went awry! I’ll leave that fabulous style to the master, Quentin Blake!

You can read more about Roald Dahl’s life here in Wikipedia… he lead a somewhat tragic and turbulent life that makes you appreciate more the lighthearted wickedness of his stories.

Illustrator Michael Flemming is posting a Star Wars ABC photoset on Flickr which is well worth keeping tabs on if you’re a Star Wars geek like me! The digital illustrations are a lot of fun, and feature the lesser known characters characters in all their obscure glory.

Eeeeeeee, another good coupon from Borders (Australia): this weeks is a buy-2-get-1-free for full-priced children’s books until Sep. 13, 2007! Here’s a link to the voucher.