American Girl

Right now I'm working away, illustrating  the American Girl "Girl of the Year" books for 2013. I can't tell you anything about them, but I can show you the Girl of the Year books I did for 2011 - Aloha Kanani!  and Good Job Kanani! I was far too frantic last year to really enjoy the books coming out all over the USA - but now that things have calmed down, I've picked the locks on the shackles that chained me to my drawing table and plunged my smoking pencils into a bucket of cold water, I can actually look back and get excited in retrospect! The books were about Kanani, who lives in Hawaii, which meant I got to work with delectable tropical colours and seacapes galore.

 I painted all the pictures on the computer - that might sound weird, but I use a program called Corel Painter that really works a lot like paint, and I have a special digital tablet and pen that works a bit like a canvas and paintbrush. 

Sometimes people seem to think that computers can just sort of magic up a picture for you, but it's actually as much work as painting with real paints - just less messy, and if I make a mistake there's always the CTRL-Z button! Wish I had one of those in real life... 

Want to see one of the pictures in progress? Here's a little animation I made of the different stages that Kanani's face went through for the cover of the first book. You can tell that painting on the computer isn't much different to painting in the real world - it still starts off UGLY! Then I gradually add layers till it doesn't look so shabby:

And here's the final painting: 

 I learned a lot about painting realistically, about composing complicated scenes with lots of characters, and about how to use lighting for dramatic effect. It was quite a challenge, as you can see from these pictures - there's a lot going on in them, huh?!

If you'd like to see more, Kanani has her own page on the American Girl website, with lots of games and activities...

The Kanani books were ghostwritten by the lovely Lisa Yee,

but the real genius behind them was her small yellow accomplice Peepy.

 That's one of my paintings of Kanani up there in the shop window, larger than life-size Lisa... and Peepy is showing you the Kanani dolls and outfits that filled American Girl stores last year.  

 Here are some of the displays in the American Girl stores - all photos courtesy of Lisa, who sent them to me and said I could blog them. (Thanks, Lisa!)

On the road!

Just like Jack Kerouac, only much less hip... I'm on a road trip around New South Wales running illustration workshops in rural schools, accompanied by the glamorous Chris Cheng and my two lovely assistants, Nikau and Zoe.

Nikau, Zoe and Chris at our first cafe stopover.Our trip is funded by the Country Area Program, which provides opportunities for isolated schools. Together we'll journey almost 3000 kilometres, and speak at 12 schools! It's a wonderful chance to see the lie of the land, explore NSW, and drop in on schools that are so far flung that they don't often have visitors. Look how much ground we're covering! If you stretched that blue line out straight, I think it would almost reach New Zealand...

View CAP author/illustrator tour in a larger map

My new assisstant.

Zoe left her white bunny Itty Bit in my studio, but he made himself useful and helped me with the pictures for Fearless in Love. Then after all his hard work, we needed a break - we talked about carrot supply issues over a cup of dandelion tea. Ah, fun times. 

Thanks, Highfields and Maryong!

Two great school visits - Highfields is a lovely little kinder to Year 2 primary Reggio Emilia school in Lindfield - they even had three school chickens who got carted round by the kids all over the playground and into the library! Ginger was my favourite, but she didn't lay me an egg. I don't have any photos from Highfields, sadly, but I do have a couple from my visit today to Maryong P.S. Lots of lively kids, great questions, and lots of crazy collaborative illustration... Thanks to Sue and Ann for their AMAZING hospitality, which included caramel slice and berry crumble! here are the 15 minute drawings we did together at the end of each session - the kids invent the story, and I carry out their orders like the obedient minion I am. 

The SCBWI 40th Anniversary Summer Conference - Laurent Linn and Paul O. Zelinsky

In the afternoon on Day One, I went to hear Laurent Linn, art director for Simon and Schuster, talk about the process of creating a book cover. It was enthralling to see some amazing art work developed from sketch to final rendering, and to get a window into the thinking behind all the various permutations and revisions that led to the final. It was also a revelation to see the role that the marketing department play in cover design, particularly when we got the low-down on one particularly nightmarish cover job, where they went through 3-4 illustrators and no less than 3 final images (I can't count past two, so it may have been more than that...) before they finally settled on a cover that fitted the market niche that they envisioned for the book. But it was clear that the marketing department are experts at knowing what will work in a commercial arena, and at selling books, which is what we all want. Despite the fact that the process may sometimes be frustrating, it's a question of using all the different areas of expertise within a publishing house to produce a product that will be both an artistic and commercial success. I did a sketch of Laurent, but then I found his  "David after the Dentist" parody and nothing else will do. Here it is. 

Then I went to a workshop run by Paul O. Zelinsky, whose work I've admired for a long time. In fact, when I did my first book I was researching the technique of grisaille underpainting, and I found a great online explanation he'd posted of the technique (which unfortunately seems to have disappeared or I'd link to it.) In his workshop he gave us a wonderful insight into his working methods for his more traditional paintings, and I was especially impressed with his dedication to finding the right models for his work... he not only hired dancers from a national ballet company, but even got up the nerve to approach a stranger when he found the perfect model for his Miller's Daughter in Rumplestiltskin. But most impressively, in order to find out what the herb Rapunzel looked like, he actually ordered seed from a heirloom catalogue and grew the plants in his studio. Now that's devotion! And because he wanted his witch's house in Hansel and Gretel to be tiled with pancakes, he cooked up a batch and drew from real pancake models. 

The page I was doodling on in my sketchbook while listening to Paul Zelinsky. Sorry it's not a more flattering sketch! I'll do better next time.

At the end of the day we had the PAL book sale and signing - Chris and I dragged along 40 copies of Sounds Spooky, which will be released in September, putting me dangerously over my luggage limit, but luckily I didn't have to lug them all home again, because they all sold out on the first day! Here's Chris looking all authorial and me with three chins and stupid hair at the book signing, but don't look at me - Look at the book! The BOOK! Isn't it shiny?

I also went to the illustrator's social, which was so social I forgot to take any pictures... but I did get to chat with illustrator  E.B. Lewis and Cecilia Yung, art director at Penguin, and meet up with some lovely friends.