Picture book process drawings

Picture making for me, whether it's for a book or making personal art, is a chance to use my imagination. Here are some of the initial concept sketches from my latest book project, They're Building a House Next Door.

Even if it's the apparent mundane, I try to look for ways to reinterpret the subject using imagination. It all starts with a pencil, and a vision that develops usually very slowly, and with a lot of trial and error.

I can't remember who said it, but I recall back in my animation college days, someone, perhaps a teacher saying, "if you can do it in live action, why animate it?". That was good advice, and possibly more so now with the advent of AI image generation. 

If I was guiding a new artist now, perhaps I would say, 'If you can prompt it, why paint or draw it?'. As artists, I feel it's up to us more than ever to imbue our work with a personal vision and not merely create polished images.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy an earlier post about this project here.

Wallaby paintings

Recently I've developed a love for painting wallabies. I think it has come in part from some chance encounters on bush walks around South East Queensland where I live. There's something truly magical about seeing these graceful, carefree creatures in the wild. 

Here's a pair in my recent minimalist style, painted with watercolour.

Prints available on my Etsy shop.

Other times I think I just want to be a wallaby, or a 'Roo' as we sometimes call kangaroos in Australia. Here's one having a kip (a nap). Not an alarm clock anywhere in sight.

One more minimalist watercolour, approximately half an A4 sheet. Grazing wallaby against a blazing dusk glow. 

Imagining a tropical waterhole

For me, each kind of plant has its own personality. I love to explore compositions with each one, seeing how they arrange, and what kind of space and feelings they produce. I think in another life I might have been a gardener.

Fan palms, with their energetic starburst shaped fronds are exuberant, and irrepressibly optimistic, quite the opposite of myself, which is perhaps why I enjoy painting them so much.

The art of children's book endpapers

I was quite pleased with the endpapers I illustrated for book 1 of this series, The Garbage Trucks Are Coming Today! And so as I set out on illustrating Susan Taylor's second book in the series, I knew I wanted to do something really fun with the endpapers again.

I'm a long time fan of Hokusai, the Japanese Edo period ukiyo-e artist (woodblock printmaking). How fun it might be I thought, to fill the double spread with sloshing, swirling waves of concrete in the spirit of Hokusai's great wave?

Book 2 endpaper design

Book 1 endpaper design

I hope you (and your children) enjoy these endpapers as much as I enjoyed illustrating them. Below are a couple more samples for your enjoyment from book 2 titled, They're Building a House Next Door!