Waterstones Competition

Hey,
does anyone know for the waterstones competition if we can draw any of the animals mentioned
both the ones freddie imagines and the ones that appear?
also do we need to add the text on top or do we not need to bother with the text?

Thanks!

Julia Donaldson

anyone else think i should stick to pencil colour lol? this is my go at watercolour for freddie.

cheltenham-illustration-awards Deadline 8th May

The Cheltenham Illustration Awards 2009

The Awards will celebrate the creativity and diversity of contemporary narrative illustration, by rewarding new and emerging talent and providing a showcase for internationally recognized narrative illustrators with a specially invited exhibition and Annual.

Qualification for this category:
Entries are welcomed from recent graduates, previously unpublished artists/illustrators, and artists/illustrators who have not yet broken into mainstream markets. Minimum age 16.

Your brief is to interpret the theme of ‘True Stories’ in whatever style or media you choose. A narrative (storytelling) element is important, however surreal or oblique you may wish to make it. Your work may be single or multiple panels, our only restriction is that it should be able to be printed on ONE A3 sheet and supplied in digital form on CD (CMYK, JPEG quality 8 format).

If you wish to email your entry, you may send the forms and the image as an attachment, provided you can keep the file size below 5MB. (See technical note, below.) Send to cheltillustrationawards@glos.ac.uk

Technical note: It is very important that files are saved as JPEG, and the quality is set to 8 or, in the case of emailed images, 7. The image size should be no more than 42 x 29 cm and the resolution set to 300 dpi. This should result in files being no more than 2 MB in size.Please try to save the file in CMYK mode if possible. Unflattened Photoshop files (filenames ending in “.psd”) cause files to be unnecessarily large and could be disqualified.

An exhibition will be held at the University of Gloucestershire Pittville Studios in October 2009 (exact dates to be confirmed) The selected winners work will be showcased at the exhibition along with other commended images and specially invited professionals. Work will be posted on the Awards website and used in promotional publications, the most important will be a full colour Annual which will be sent out to industry professionals and universities.

Entry fees, Terms and Conditions
• £10 standard fee per entry
• Up to five entries per person will be allowed
• Entries will not be returned
• Minimum age of entrants: 16

Please make cheque payable to the University of Gloucestershire together with your application form and CD-Rom to:

The CIA, University of Gloucestershire, Pittville Studios, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL52 3JG

Deadline for submissions 8 May 2009

• Entries will not be accepted without entry fee
• The University of Gloucestershire reserves the right to cancel the event should sufficient entries not be received for this competition
• Files will not be returned

Submission Format

• Artwork must be supplied digitally on CD-Rom or emailed to cheltillustrationawards@glos.ac.uk
• All submissions should be clearly marked with your name and contact details in permanent pen
• File format: JPEG quality 8 or 7 for email. No other file formats will be accepted.
• File size 42 x 29 cm max, resolution 300 dpi
• Include an A4 printout of the image for administration purposes

Judging
• Judging of entries will take place in August by a professional committee from the University and Illustration industry.
• Winners will be notified by email or post when possible. However if you have not heard from us by 20 September 2009, your entry has been unsuccessful.

Charity work :D

This isn't picture books but I'm just really happy :D

I was asked by a friend to design the postcards for her READ dog, a charity organisation that helps children to read by doing it in front of dogs. At the moment there are only two dogs in the UK that are registered to do it.

The postcards will be given to kids after they have read in front of the dog. These are two sketches I've done for it already, and I've just been asked to design them for both teams.
I don't know how far this will go, but so far so good :D

Spreads

So this is mainly for milan since he requested me to upload something and seeing as i'm still trying to finish organising my dummy book to print very early tomorrow, plus a late night, a little procastination never hurt anyone! Here is an example of two of my final spreads, feel free to give constructive criticism, but don't take it to hurt if I don't change it by tomorrow morning...lol because that'll be pretty impossible...hmm unless they're unanimously hated, then maybe I will?

Double spread

It won't be ready for this year this is the next image for the story. Hope everyones work is going well. Murray post something!!! i wanna see the rest of the story!

MacMillans - who's submitting?

Out of those doing books: Milan, Katie, Murray, Vicki, Yolande, Niovi, Beckie, etc...

anyone submitting - needs to be complete by Wednesday, though at a push you could take it down in person Thursday, or even Friday

double spread

In case you can't tell, its a cross section view of tunneling under a river (it makes sense in the story, honest!)
I changed the colours using hue/saturation although it looks a little gloomy for children's book perhaps?

kt.

Work in progress..

Well, as promised here is the first practice of my new technique! I usually steer clear of digital editing but due to time constraints, I had to come up with a better solution than hand collage. (thinking back that was a pretty stupid idea !) So I scanned in all the textures I made and layered them on photoshop.

Before and After:
The one on the left was my original rough. The one on the right I coloured, rescanned and erased the white background with my textures as a layer underneath - thus creating a finished page! Sort of ... this is only a test version I did - the edges are obviously not aligned in this one so will probs need to redo the backgrounds. But this is generally what it will look like:

















Trying to think of a better tool to use than just the eraser tool... Working on it atm and will be posting the work in progress on my blog. Any ideas would be appreciated!
thanks.
kt.

And just a couple more to show you the diff layouts.

A few pages from my dummy book.

Here you are people, please scrutinize away! Just a couple of pages from my dummy book, i may have to print them again though as since I printed them all out I'm not sure about the font!

A bit of practice.

These are two practice images I've done for a couple of pages, there is more to them than this but it was too big for my scanner and had to take the pictures with my camera.
They were a pain in the butt to do, and the paper on the top image just pretty much disintegrated from all the paint and the masking fluid ripped of the coating which means I'll have to change my paper >_<
Anywho, hope everyone had a good Easter, I finally decided to get a blog...well a better one than before: Jellysock

First 4 pages and a dummy

Hey guys, i just finished the 4 first pages of my book. Their not the best ones and the text isn't placed yet, but it s a good sample of the colour palette i ll be using and the whole mood anw of the book..the quality here is not that good cz my pc is a bit funny when uploading for blogger so i had to save the pics as bitmaps







These are a few pics of my bnw dummy :)

update

ive just photoshopped the arse off this and tried to tidy it all up- any comments would be appreciated. thanks and hope everyones having a good easter

Clotilde Perrin does drypoints!

Just found this on the clotilde perrin site:
http://www.clotildeperrin.net/multi-atelier/pages%20gravures/page-gravure1.html

Lots of drypoints that I never noticed before!
This was precisely what I wanted to do for my children's book! V annoying how I can't use the print room ...



ps. I made a bunch of textures for my backgrounds which I was going to collage somehow - but I found a way of doing it digitally. Will post the probably botched results soon :P

Picture This

"We wanted to draw your attention to the Picture This competition being run by Waterstone’s in conjunction with Macmillan Children’s Books. Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo, has written a new picture book text - Freddie and the Fairy - and budding illustrators are invited to enter the competition to win the opportunity to illustrate the book. For more information click on the link www.waterstones.com/picturethis"

This competition is quite separate from our annual Macmillan Prize for Illustration, which of course we hope your students will be entering in the usual way.

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/navigate.do?pPageID=1789

Little Red Riding Hood

Hi everyone, I thought I'd have a go at picture books. Here are some of the images I'm preparing for a dummy book. My scanner is on the blink so these are just photos of my work. I need to scan them in and render them with text too. Not sure about submitting them for Macmillans, I just wanted to have a go really! So let me know what you all think :o) Thanks!

Progress update

Just a little update on some of my work, Just a small example of some of the pages I've been working on, let me know what you think. I'm aware I'm still lacking that consistent strength for picture book, but I'm happy with my progress to this point, I'm just aiming to get the book finished to best standard i can do, but jump in with constructive criticism as want to keep improving it if I can! Cheers, hope everyone is having a good easter and really impressed with the workload/quality people have been uploading!