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 ;)

Easter Eggs © Heather Castles

With Easter around the corner, I thought I’d illustrate a few Easter coloring pages to keep Hera busy for a while! Feel free to download the PDF colouring page and enjoy scribbling away! (And if you email me your little one’s colouring efforts, I’ll post them here for them to show the world :)

I had drawn this illustration a year ago as a concept sketch, then yesterday used Inkpad on my iPad to vectorize the pencil illustration… loved using that program, was the first time I had used it and it felt very natural tracing my illustration on the iPad with my dagi stylus. Even made me think Adobe has some serious competition… I love Adobe Illustrator, but when you can buy an app app like Inkpad for $4.99 which is so easy to use, why would anyone want to spend hundreds of dollars on the desktop version?

p.s. If you’re looking for more coloring pages for your little ones, you’ll also love this adorable April colouring page by Crystal Driedger.

This is a great article for authors / childrens book illustrators who want to get their books out there digitally. To sum up, authors are making their e-books available through app stores at affordable prices… and making it big.

E-books are the next generation of self-publishing… or e-publishing. It’s inexpensive to create an e-book, and as easy as creating a PDF… do a quick google search and there are many articles on how to build your own e-book. I also love the fact that the impact on the environment is low… you aren’t wasting paper by printing thousands of books, are saving the cost of fuel in distributing the books, etc. Because authors are saving on the up front costs of printing their books, as well as publishing themselves and cutting out the middle-men (printers, publishers & shipping), they are able to price their books lower and reach a wider audience.

“While traditional novelists only see a very small amount of royalties on their book if it’s not a best seller, Hocking gets 70% of all money from her book sales. Since she sells around 100,000 copies of her books per month, that’s a lot of money.”

I bought my first e-book this week (Ready, Set, Green : Treehugger.com), and I must say I was miffed that it was priced the same as the printed paper version… if I have the choice between a paper book and a digital book at the same price, I would pick the paper book hands down. It just doesn’t make sense why publishers would price these e-books at the same price as printed books if they are saving so much money on printing & distribution. (Who wants to spend a lot of money on something that can be duplicated with as little effort as typing Apple-C-Apple-V?)
There are ebooks also available as iPad apps for kids… iBook comes with a free copy of Milne’s classic Winnie the Pooh, and in the app store there are many free picture books for kids (The Grouchies by Debbie Wagenbach.) Children’s book authors/illustrators have a great opportunity to add e-books alongside their printed book offerings.

P.S. If anyone comes across a great how-to for building a picture e-book, please let me know! I’m going to give it a go myself at some point on my own picture books, but being on maternity leave it’s not exactly a high priority over changing diapers at the moment ;)

“Kindle indie author is making millions by selling the App Store way” via Geek.com

“The picture books that do the best are a real marriage of writing and illustration.”
– Kenny Brechner, book shop owner (via Publisher Weekly Article)

I realized I never posted about the launch of the ScoliosisDiagnosis.com website, featuring Nina Saab’s book (and my!) “Bookie and the Scoliosis Diagnosis.” It’s a light-hearted picture book for kids aimed to educate as well as raise awareness of the detection and treatment of scoliosis at an early age.

This is a really interesting article over at Publisher’s Weekly (by Karen Springen) debunking a sensationalized article posted at the New York Times claiming picture books are in decline. It is a great read for children’s book illustrators as it goes into a lot of depth on what can affect children’s book sales, who is buying and reading books, and a lot of valuable insight into the industry.
I love that this article touches on the misconception that picture books are for children only up to about 3 years old… that they are in fact often appropriate for much older kids (and in my case, even adults!)

I also really liked how the article addresses the introduction of electronic media :

“Kids are omnivorous,” she (Kristen McLean) said. “We’ve lived with this idea of television is bad, books are good. What we’re finding is that it’s all reinforcing literacy. The kids who are reading a lot are also the kids who are participating online, are blogging, are involved in lots of different media.”

I know this to be true of my three-year-old… she knows how to use my ipad and turn on the playstation, but those things haven’t stopped her from looking at her picture books for hours. Ultimately I think that it comes down to supply & demand… as parents if we feel picture books are important for our kids, they will be available to meet our demands.

Here’s a little doodle I did in my sketchbook of Hank’s preemie clothes (close to actual size.) I just loved how little they were so wanted to capture that! I’m not planning on doing a series as I’ve done with my diary of Hera’s stuff, but couldn’t resist doing this one at least :) This one is just ink on paper, and I’ve scanned it and applied colour on my iPad with Sketchbook Pro using a Dagi stylus.

Am happy to officially be off on maternity leave now that our son, Hank, has come home from hospital after being born three months early. He is strong and healthy and growing chubbier by the day (though still small, he is wearing teddy bear doll clothing in this picture!) Thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers along the way, they meant so much to us. So I will be taking a big break from blogging, I’m too busy enjoying being a mum of two :)

About a week before my son Hank decided to arrive early, I had some time on my hands to doodle some of Hera’s toddler outfits she outgrew this year… had a little time today so thought I’d share the latest for my illustrated diary of Hera’s outfits. They are all pen doodles with watercolour washes done in my sketchbook… haven’t done much watercolour on plain bond paper before, and found it made for very warped paper afterwards! Wouldn’t recommend it for a lot of layering of colours, but for a quick study it’s fun.

Tom Krause, author of “The Little Boy’s Smile,” recently sent me this link to a reading of our story up on YouTube… enjoy!