Toerag
Character designs for a junior fiction title
Draft panels for an MG graphic novel
Draft panels for a graphic novel
Horse transportation
Unused artwork from middle grade novel ‘Brittany and Co. Take on Paris’ by John Larkin, published by Larrikin House
Shell model sheet
Various character poses of Shell Shimmerfins from MerTales
Anveera character art
Anveera character art
Shell and turtle
Mermaid character Shell Shimmerfins from the MerTales series.
Red
This is a quick character design for a picture book about a girl with red hair, hand-drawn and scanned into Photoshop, then painted digitally. I had a lot of fun painting the hair, keeping the brush strokes messy and loose. Normally my style is a lot neater, which I’m learning is not necessarily a good thing – drawing ‘tightly’ is a learned habit from my animation days, where the lines had to be neat with consistent thickness, and had to ‘close up’ (i.e. join together with no gaps) to make the colouring process quicker. In illustration I’ve found that technique makes my work a little stilted and wooden. These days I’m opting for a looser, sketchier style that tries to capture movement in one pose, rather than ‘making’ the movement through animation. It’s not easy, and something I will continue to practice. For some great examples of using line to create movement, take a look at the work of illustrator Ann James – she is utterly brilliant.
The pencil outlines for this work were also not painted over in Photoshop (unlike Super Nova), but just strengthened and coloured using some Photoshop magic. I think it makes for a rougher but more appealing effect.
Dive!
I’ve been a little obsessed with mermaids lately, playing around with three different story ideas (two picture books and a junior fiction series). This is an early character design of one of my mermaid characters, Princess Pearl, hand drawn and then digitally painted in Photoshop with pastel-type brushes. This is one of the first illustrations I’ve done where I haven’t used outlines to define edges. Not using outlines was a bit of a brain twist for me, but you end up with a more 3-dimensional effect. Hopefully I’ll get better with practice!
Favourite aspects of this illustration are the colours – the blue, pink and yellow seems to work really nicely – the ‘stretched’ bubbles that add an element of movement, and the light blue highlighting on Pearl’s tail, hair and coral crown. I remember reading something in a book by artist Tim Hildebrandt about highlights and shadows under different conditions. Under warm light (such as the sun, a fire, candlelight etc), highlights are warm – think yellow and orange, while shadows are cool – think blue, purple and green. When the source of light is cool – such as moonlight, or light dispersed through water – the opposite applies; highlights are cool colours, and shadows are warm colours. Thanks Tim!
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.
The Growly Bear #1
This is the first illustration from The Growly Bear, written by my grandmother Coral O’Donnell.
The bear is drawn in watercolour pencil on hot pressed watercolour paper, while the background has been done digitally using a Wacom tablet in Photoshop.
This book is now available in paperback and hard cover in the store.