Singing mouse
Forget Gerry, this is Sydney a singing mouse…
It’s a picture book all about a singing mouse that I illustrated last year for a private client, wanting to self publish his story. It is now on sale (I believe) at the Sydney Opera House, which is quite clever of him. The project was very much client led (except, funnily enough for the above illustration), so the illustrations very much reflect the author’s vision for each page. I think when you’ve worked very hard on writing a book, it is quite understandable that you want to oversea each stage of your vision. So its a two-way creative process. You work with the client and envisage their ideas, but it’s also my responsibility advise a client as best as I can. Hopefully this results in a good creative collaboration…
Photoshop scribbly magic
The illustrations were created using a combination of hand drawn work and digital painting. Sometimes digitally painting artwork is a sensible move, if you find yourself doing a substantial amount of final artwork editing. Imagine painting a wonderful illustration with, let’s say, a sunny blue sky and your client changes their mind and wants a sunset! Disaster! So out comes the paper, pencils and paintbrushes again (and more cups of fruit tea, if it’s me).
Mousy capers
I really enjoyed creating the character of Sydney. For me that’s always the most favourite bit of the whole process. Luckily I nailed Sydney’s look with the first sketch (hooray)! Hope you like Sydney too. However if you’re looking for a dancing cat, a barking snake or maybe drippy dragon, please to contact me (here) and we can have a chat.
So what’s next? Well I’m currently working on a lovely reading guide story about a boy, who rescues a beautiful parkland and a very rare bird!
