Little Sister

This is Nova, the little sister from the picture book Super Nova, written by Krys Saclier and published by Ford Street Publishing (2019).

I had great fun illustrating Super Nova. The characters and backgrounds are all hand-drawn, then I scanned each page into my computer and used my graphics tablet (a Wacom Intuos Pro, and basically beloved like a fourth child) to digitally paint in the colour in Adobe Photoshop™. I used three brushes – a rough pastel-type brush that added lots of texture; a sketchy pencil-type brush with a slightly different texture to the pastel brush, used for shadows and to soften the edges of the pastel brush; and a hard pencil-type brush for outlining, that still created some texture (kind of like a sharp, high-quality crayon).

Working with an editor was a new experience for me, as all of my previous books have been self-published. For me it was the most valuable part of the whole process – I called it ‘the start of my apprenticeship’. Nan’s experience was priceless, and I learnt oodles about picture book illustration, including defining a style, capturing movement in a character’s pose, correctly drawing perspective, and pushing myself to get the best result for the book.

Super Nova is available in both paperback and hardcover from Ford Street Publishing, or from your local library or bookstore.