Orange Tourist Guide for Research Material

Orange has some wonderful places to visit: Mount Canobolas and Federal Falls, Ophir and Summerhill Creek, Borenore Caves, and a multitude of lovely parks, vineyards and restaurants.

But one of my favourite places to visit is The Recovery Centre at the Orange tip, where you can remind yourself and your children, of the repercussions of consumerism while partaking in a satisfying and ethical dose of retail therapy.

The tip shop, as we call it, is always inspiring...

... and provided brilliant reference material for Look, A Book:

It's worth visiting for other reasons too. I have picked up some of my favourite Woodsware crockery out there, a beautiful West German jug, and not so long ago I was lucky enough to inherit a working overhead projector that a friend found at the Recovery Centre. And this brings me to my next planned post, which may or may not, appear soon...

Adding Colour

I've been meaning to write something about how I use colour for quite some time now, and finally have something I can show with a bit of colour theory behind it.

I must have learnt something about colour theory in my first year of university, but haven't retained the knowledge. So when a friend suggested she'd like to learn some colour theory, we began attending special private colour theory classes taught by my mum at the dining table in my parents' back room. In actual fact, I've only managed to make it to two classes so far, but in the second class we made this colour wheel:

I particularly like how you can turn the arrow around to show opposites and triads.

With my colour wheel on my desk before me, it was time to put the theory of colour opposites into practice with a book called Go To Sleep, Jessie written by Libby Gleeson.

Baby Jessie has moved into Jo's bedroom, but she won't go to sleep. She just screams and screams, and keeps Jo awake. Nothing either parent does seems to work. But eventually, of course, Jo knows just the thing that will settle Jessie.

In my illustrations I tried to create two distinct worlds; that of 'upstairs' where the two children are supposed to sleep and 'downstairs' where the parents read the newspaper, watch television and eat chocolates. It provided the perfect opportunity to test out colour opposites.

So, upstairs in the bedroom it is predominantly blue. While downstairs, where the lights are on and parents are still up doing things, it is orange, the opposite colour to blue on the colour wheel.

Here's the colour test I did...

...a finished upstairs scene...

...and a finished page showing both upstairs and downstairs.

The aim was simply to create contrast between the two opposite environments: upstairs, downstairs; dark, light; quiet, noise; asleep, awake. Regardless of whether it worked, the exercise showed me how I can create a really strong colour scheme for a book.

My Two Blankets

Due out in February this year (2014) is a book by Irena Kobald called My Two Blankets. An advance copy arrived late last year, amidst the flurry of end of year deadlines and activities. But today, just as I was considering posting something about the book, a whole box of them arrived!

My Two Blankets is the story of a young girl called Cartwheel who leaves her own war torn country for somewhere safe. But the new place is so foreign to her she no longer feels like herself. Cartwheel seeks comfort in a metaphorical blanket of her own words and sounds. When a young girl shows her friendship and begins to teach her new words, Cartwheel begins to create a new blanket from these words and sounds she learns.

The metaphorical blanket was a difficult concept to illustrate and took me a long time to solve. But I was really attracted to the idea of a visual interpretation of feelings, sounds and words. As with any concept requiring interpretation, there are endless different visual solutions and everyone has a different idea of what works the best. This would have been a great book to give to several illustrators to see what each came up with. I'd love to see other peoples' takes on the concept.

Eventually Cartwheel's old blanket became a simple design that Cartwheel was an integral part of. It contains symbols based on African weavings, fabrics and sculptures.

I often use colour to help convey a concept and with this book I used colour as well as the medium to differentiate between Cartwheel and this new country. The new place is pale and cool and painted in watercolour, whereas Cartwheel and her old home are warm and saturated and painted in oil paints.

The story discusses the sensation Cartwheel feels when surrounded by the unusual sounds of this new country. She describes it as a cold waterfall of strange sounds. Initially I intended this 'waterfall' to be thick with symbols that represented words. Like this:

In the roughs, I just showed this as a messy scrawl because I couldn't be bothered drawing these precise little symbols over and over, and the scrawl seemed to work better than lots of symbols. So this is how it ended up:

Here is the beginning of Cartwheel's new blanket, built on a diagonal spiral form:

Published by Little Hare Books, My Two Blankets is out in February 2014.

Inspiring Illustrators - Part One

I often get asked about my favourite illustrators. So I've put together a list, starting with two illustrators I have loved from the very beginning, Lisbeth Zwerger and Armin Greder.

Exploring other picture book illustrator's work was an important part of starting out for me, as I'd had no training in illustration or picture books and therefore had absolutely NO IDEA what I was doing.

I discovered the work of Austrian illustrator Lisbeth Zwerger early on and collected many of her books, mesmerised by so many elements within her illustrations. I've really enjoyed the evolution of her work; for although the work becomes brighter and sharper, it is never tight and contrived.

I've taken a photo or two of her work and hope she doesn't mind me posting them here.

I love the way she interprets a story, her subtle, yet quirky characters, the intricate patterns in her work, the inspired composition of each painting and use of negative space. I have always been intrigued by the way she puts colour on, especially in the earlier illustrations (see above) where the colour seems to have a mind of its own; it bleeds and crosses the drawing lines but makes the illustration all the more exciting and free. But most importantly for me, it is the way she draws people that is so enormously inspiring, full of movement and so much life they nearly make me cry.

I have many of her books but that which I held very close to me for some time is The Art of Lisbeth Zwerger. It is an absolute visual feast. You can get it on Fishpond. Click here.


Armin Greder is another illustrator whose work I have watched closely, particularly his books with Libby Gleeson. His illustrations work so perfectly with her words and this relationship was something I definitely aspired to. Uncle David is one of my favourites, combining Armin's iconic flowing charcoal line work, areas of bright colour and these brilliant page designs! I love the way he frames and crops images.

His drawings of people are wonderfully fluid and expressive. I'm particularly fond of this one here (below) as it is none other than Libby Gleeson and her husband, Euan, standing amongst the parents.

I love the way his illustrations sometimes just engulf the written story, especially in An Ordinary Day and The Great Bear, where the pictures take over and the words never return. What perfect picture books! The Great Bear has recently been republished by Walker Books in Australia.

Thank you to Armin Greder for allowing me to post photos of your work.

Part Two of Inspiring Illustrators coming some time soon, but possibly not that soon...

Freya's Four Stages of Drawing

There's nothing better than knowing you've got another job to start when you finally finish the one that's running late. And I really can't imagine a better job than being an illustrator of children's books. But I've been noticing a bit of a cycle developing, and it seems to be spinning slower with each rotation.

I'm currently working on the first book in a series called "The Cleo Stories" written by Libby Gleeson and due for publication in 2014 by Allen & Unwin. This 64 page storybook was going to be quick and easy, but woah, there's a lot of drawing in a 64 page book. And I've rather extended the work load by having many full page colour drawings and a detailed aerial view on the endpapers (something left over from the 'anything is possible' period - see below).

I've noticed a series of stages I go through when illustrating a book. The first stage- the early excitement that comes with starting every new book when anything is possible- has well and truly passed now. This stage is characterised by scrawled interpretations of the interesting things you imagine in your head. They don't make any sense, but editors will pretend they understand exactly what is depicted.

Following this is the creation of 'roughs', which is simultaneously my favourite part of the process for the expressive and free drawings that result, but also the hardest because it can be so excrutiatingly difficult to solve the various problems creatively. This stage is where the first ideas are drawn up in slightly more detail to see if they work alongside the text and alongside each other. This is always much harder that expected. The lovely thing about this stage though is you don't have to draw the details you can't be bothered drawing - you only have to convey the general feeling. And there is a lovely freedom in this. Without exception, these drawings are always nicer than the next in the process.

Following this stage is the mind numbing period when everything must be drawn for the THIRD time, all the while trying desperately hard to pretend that it's the first time. Everything becomes slow and even though I sit at my desk and work, days pass without a useful line drawn. It's very hard to dodge the inevitable tightness that these drawings tend to have.

This stage can feel like an eternity but suddenly it morphs into a much more frantic period when I just need to get the blasted book finished. By this stage I'm left with all the drawings I didn't particularly like, and all those I couldn't work out in the earlier stages when there was some creativity flowing somewhere. And through sheer desperation, I make marks on the page that just have to do.

This is where I am at the moment.

But following this stage is the wonderful moment when colour is introduced and remnants of that early excitement return. I'm happy to say that I'm very, very close to arriving there. And so, I will return, in colour and full of positivity!

Lovely Cartwheel - Characters Who Design Themselves

I've been really enjoying this little character called Cartwheel, from a book I'm doing called My Two Blankets, written by Irena Kobald. Cartwheel is a very timid little girl, sheltering next to or behind her aunty. She's moved to a place that is so strange to her that she no longer feels like herself.

I don't tend to spend all that much time designing characters. I don't know whether I'm supposed to do more or not, but they seem to sort themselves out while I work on the rest of the book. I might do some quick initial character sketches, like these ones I did back at the beginning of the year when I started the book.

It's an especially lovely moment when a character gets colour for the first time. And Cartwheel was no exception, with her warm, saturated colour against a cool and pale background. It took me by surprise when I discovered Cartwheel had developed into such a beautiful little child, full of subtlety in her posture and expression. Here she is with her aunty.

Cartwheel seemed to have designed herself and was in complete control.  In some drawings of her, I couldn't even really remember drawing them - it was all her, quietly reworking a drawing until it expressed exactly how she felt.

Cartwheel and her aunty have been my work companions for six months now. They've been very quiet and shy but I'll miss them dreadfully when I've finished. Only a few more days of their company left...

My Two Blankets will be published some time in 2014 I guess, by Little Hare Books.

BANJO & RUBY RED Becomes A Book

Look what has become a real book! 

You can open it, smell it, turn the pages and READ it!  

It's got a quarter binding that looks and feels really nice. And the cover has my two favourite colours on it. 

And so far, there's nothing about it I don't like. 

Banjo & Ruby Red, written by Libby Gleeson, is a lovely story about the antagonism and eventual friendship between an old farm dog called Banjo, and a haughty chicken called Ruby Red. 

My dad, who isn't one to come out and say anything too gushy,  got a bit emotional at one point in the story and I deduced that he really liked it! 

Banjo & Ruby Red is coming out in August, but I believe my local bookshop unpacked some today. 

Here are some of my favourite images: