Ok, just one more peak, but that’s the last one as I need to knuckle down and finish the last five illustrations this week! The main things I’ve been working on are the greenery, sidewalks, tents, and backgrounds… putting off the hard parts for last, typical me :)

I tried a new trick too… I’ve seen quite a few digital illustrations which which use silhouettes of people, rather than illustrating every detail of the person, clothing, etc. So I thought I’d give it a go, and added in some silhouettes of people in the far background to add more depth & a sense that there are a lot of people in the illustration. Am pleased with the effect, as it was a simple way of adding some interest behind the action in the foreground, without taking the time it would had I gone in with my 0-Paintbrush and tried to illustrate those tiny faces & bodies! I think I’ll use this silhouette technique more often.

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 :

• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Concept Boards

The illustrations for Tom Krause’s “The Little Boy’s Smile” are ticking along well, so thought I’d share a sneak snapshot of the collection of illustrations for the book… only the top left 4 are completed, and the remaining six are well underway!  I’ve been working on completing these acrylic illustrations one at a time, up until yesterday when I was feeling “yellow” so painted all the soft yelow skies at once… and this morning when I was feeling “blue” and painted all the blue skies! I think this afternoon is starting to feel a little “green.” This book is a lot of fun to illustrate, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself painting, eating popsicles, listening to Just One More Book, and taking an afternoon nap! I’ll post again once I’ve scanned some of the finished illustrations…

I’ve been catching up on archiving my projects from the past year, and had fun looking over the 157 illustrations I completed in 2007 (clicking on the image above will bring up a bigger picture!)

Was a busy year for me, with illustrating 6 children’s books (Good-bye Baby Max, My Best Worst Sleepover Party Ever, Little Land Adventures, Spotty & Eddie Learn to Compromise, Bookie and the Scoliosis Diagnosis, and The Brotherhood of the Stinky Underpants); 10 signs/banners for Parks Canada; a brochure for the Library of Parliament of Canada; a chip bag illustration; a couple Threadless t-shirt contest entries (Kantina and Twisted Sister); 4 seashell mosaics; 10 greeting card illustrations; and several personal pieces.

I’ve focused on improving my illustration skills by experimenting with painting in acrylics, and being more attentive to the human form in my children’s books in particular (the fruit of which you’ll see in my current projects…) But most significant for me this year has been expecting our first baby, and discovering all the challenges of illustrating while pregnant :)

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.

I just finished the first illustration for Tom Krause’s story, “The Little Boy’s Smile.” I thought I’d share my work-in-progress for the acrylic painting and took scans every hour or two as I was painting… check them out below going backwards to the original sketch!

One super time-saving method I’ve developed is painting right on top of my sketches. I don’t paint over my original pencil sketches, as I like to keep those, and also the graphite would likely lift off and taint the paint. So what I do is :

• • Scan the original sketches
• • Tint the sketches to sepia in Photoshop using actions (so they show through as a warm tone under the paint)
• • Place them into the book’s InDesign layout with the text so that I can make sure the illustrations don’t interfere with the text, gutter, and that nothing is getting clipped off in the bleed
• • Print out the InDesign layout at full size (text & all, with cropmarks too!) on printer paper (80% Recycled was all I could find here in OZ!)
• • Trim the pages down
• • Glue them to the cold-press illustration board (I used an entire large Bostik Blustick ACMI AP Approved gluestick… and was sure to recycle the empty casing!), then use a wood-cut ink roller to smooth the pages down so there are no wrinkles
• • Once it has dried, I paint right on top of this paper! The lovely thing about acrylic is that it doesn’t eat away or dammage the surface of the paper, so you don’t need to coat the paper with a sealant first (as you would with oils.)

So, I save a day or two of transfering the sketches by hand to the illustration board, and also maintian the integrity of my original sketches. It also makes painting text a dream (such as on the sign), as you just paint over top of the text placed on your illustration. It gives the text a warmer feel than just placing it on top in the InDesign file later.

Well, I’ve been a bit negligent blogging the last few weeks as I’ve been working hard on the sketches for Tom Krause’s children’s book, “The Little Boy’s Smile.” It’s a fantastic story, about a little boy who moves to Frown Town where all everyone does is frown… and you guessed it, he just doesn’t fit in because he smiles all the time! Now that the sketches are approved, I’m setting up the final illustrations and working on the first colour proof. The finals will be in acrylic on illustration board, so bright, vibrant colours. So check back, I’ll be posting my work-in-progress as I’m building up the layers of my acrylic paintings.

This is one of three signs I illustrataed this past weekend for the Beausoleil Island Trails for Parks Canada. They are rather large paintings, 12×18 inches, so I had to scan the original watercolours in pieces then put them together in Photoshop. The signs will have text around the outside of the illustration. This one’s my fav. of the three signs… I love leopard frogs, I used to catch them all the time as a kid. And red-winged blackbirds are such beautiful songbirds. Was a lot of fun to illustrate this past weekend. You can check out some of the previous work I’ve done for Parks Canada here.

Two more down, only six more illustrations to go before “Bookie and the Scoliosis Diagnosis” is finished!

Just completed the illustration of Mr. Plastic making Bookie’s brace in Nina Saab’s “Bookie and the Scoliosis Diagnosis.” Watercolour & pencil.