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!