Children’s Book Illustration

Work in progress

I recently completed a Children’s Book Illustration course through CAE Melbourne. The course was run by the wonderful Lorette Broekstra who has been illustrating children’s books for over 10 years.

It was super nice to get out of the house (sans baby!) for a few hours a week and allow myself to focus on learning and creativity. Here’s a list of the things I liked most and got out of the course:

• New love for mixed media collage (yay a new hobby… hehee)
• Character design
• A reminder of how much work is involved in illustrating children’s books… and that it’s a labour for love, certainly not for money
• Learning of the processes involved with getting yourself published and into the book industry.

I spent some time in and after the course completing a double page spread for the well known story of the Owl & the Pussycat. There are a million things I would do differently if I were to do this again but that’s what art is all about right… finishing a piece, learning and moving onto the next thing. I think so anyway!

The spread was created using watercolour and collage… I created all my characters and elements and then collaged them together to create the scene.

Work in progress

Owl & the Pussycat finished double page spread