I was delighted to see Tartan Meets the Queen up on the Book Examples page on the Children In The Picture website. I came across this organization last year, and it struck a chord with me how important it is as an illustrator to include children of all backgrounds and circumstances in picturebooks. Tartan Meets the Queen is available online at Trafford.com.
Another exciting package arrived the mail today! Charline & Lauren sent me copies of our book, “Tartan Meets the Queen,” printed & published by Trafford Publishing. I’m pleased with how the colours turned out, again Trafford did a great job on the printing.
You can buy this book online at Trafford.com, or if you’d like to order a copy signed by the illustrator (moi!), drop me an email and I’ll arrange it for you :)
I just finished the last illustration for Charline & Lauren’s picturebook, “Tartan Meets the Queen.” Yippee! This one was a lot of fun drawing… I liked putting the squirrel in different places… sliding down the banister, sitting on the throne, peaking out from behind the chandellier. After drawing the illustrations in pencil (below), it was satisfying colouring in all of the “bling” with a few tinting layers of colour in Photoshop (above.)
So now we’re just going through doing some final edits to the book layout, then it will be off to the printers! (Read on …)
One down, one to go! Here’s the latest illustration for Charline & Lauren’s storybook, “Tartan Meets the Queen.” The illustrations for this book are all done in regular old pencil (below), then I give them a tint of colour in Photoshop (above.)
This is the first children’s book I’ve had a chance to illustrate since I joined In The Picture, a project aimed to encourage illustrators, authors & publishers to include disabled children in their books for young readers. I’ve incorporated one little girl in a funky wheelchair in this illustration as my first contribution to In The Picture. (Read on …)
One more illustration down, two to go before “Tartan Meets the Queen” is complete! I’ve saved the most detailed for last… an illustration of Buckingham Palace, and another of several of the interior rooms. Will enjoy drawing all the royal bling in those! (Read on …)
With only 3 illustrations left, the finish line is in sight for Charline & Lauren’s story, “Tartan Meets the Queen!” Here’s one of the most recent illustrations completed, I’m hoping to have the rest done in the next few weeks (depending on how long my baby Hera naps each day to let me draw!)
To see other posts on “Tartan Meets the Queen,” check out :
“Tartan Meets the Queen” © Charline Crous & Lauren Everton, Illustrations © Heather Castles
Just finished anorher illustration for Charline & Lauren’s story, “Tartan Meets the Queen.”
To see other posts on “Tartan Meets the Queen,” check out :
“Tartan Meets the Queen” © Charline Crous & Lauren Everton, Illustrations © Heather Castles
Today I finished four of the 12 illustrations for children’s book “Tartan Meets the Queen,” by Charline Crous & Lauren Everton… thought I’d share a sneak peak!
So these illustrations start out as just plain old graphite pencil drawings (above), and I tint them with colour digitally in Photoshop.
I’m LOVING the new paper I’m using for this book, it’s a very smooth, white bristol-type board… much nicer to draw with pencil on than cold-press illustration board.
I also discovered a new favourite tool… the Staedtler “Mars rasor” eraser pencil with brush. It’s one of those hard erasers, and it’s lovely because I can sharpen it to erase those tiny little details that are hard to get crisp with a kneaded or rubber eraser.
To see other posts on “Tartan Meets the Queen,” check out :
“Tartan Meets the Queen” © Charline Crous & Lauren Everton, Illustrations © Heather Castles
My sketches have just been approved for “Tartan Meets the Queen,” by Charline Crous & Lauren Everton… can’t wait to start the finals! Here is a sneak peak at a few of the spreads from the story. I plan to illustrate these with regular old graphite pencil on paper first… then I’ll scan, and colour the illustrations digitally with Photoshop (check out my easy tutorial here.)
To see other posts on Tartan Meets the Queen, check out :
Developing concepts and thumbnailing is a step that I don’t often share with my authors, but is always the first thing I do before sketching in detail the layout of a children’s book. The first thing I do is break up the manuscript into chunks that I think would be fun to illustrate… basically dividing up the manuscript into however many pages the book will be. Then I brainstorm ideas and write notes for each spread, which gets out the cobwebs before starting to sketch! Then I sketch thumbnails (which are very small rough drawings) of each spread. By thumbnailing, I can work out where I want the text to go, what reference I’ll need to gather for the subject matter, and whether the compositions are working well. For “Tartan Meets the Queen,” by Charline Crous & Lauren Everton, I thought it might be interesting to share this earlier step with both authors to involve them earlier on in the creative process. You can see here some of my notes, thumbnails, and gathered reference materials for the story which I sent to the authors in PDF format.
