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This was a commissioned Christmas card I created for a friend. It's his idea, I've done a few for him, and each year it's about the beaver character getting his Christmas tree. If you click on the image you can see it larger, a last minute addition was the bunny slippers...

For me it was from the same series of books from Happy House. I illustrated five books with whimsical themes including one about five spiders. In this illustration they are riding a bike. Not an easy thing to illustrate! I had so much fun with this project, I'd like to do more books like these ones.

This is a rabbit character I've been working on... his name is Lester. (he's reading Tales of Pirate Rabbit)

For our "yellow" topic I decide to do one of my favourite subjects, a bird. This one is called a yellow-breasted chat, and I've put him on a berry branch. This is also the new header for my other blog.

here's a detail

I love painting animals, this one is a green sea turtle. When I'm painting realistic animals I try to get the details right so that they look the way they should. Then since I'm a children's illustrator, I tweak their face expressions just a little bit so that they look friendly.

Like Anette, looking at other illustrators work can inspire me when I'm not feeling creative. My all-time favourite illustrator is the brilliant creator of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter. But I also have many favourites among contemporary artists.

One of my favourites is Tiphanie Beeke. Her portfolio will give you just a glimpse of some of the lovely paintings from her illustrated picture books. There is so much warmth and charm in her people and animal characters and they are all set against beautiful landscapes.

I also admire the tremendously talented artist, Ryoji Arai, who has illustrated many gorgeous children's picture books. His style is naive, but his mastery of colour and composition is dazzling. Unfortunately his books aren't available in English as far as I know, but I was given several by my husband who managed to order them from the Japanese Amazon site.

I really admire the work of Greg Clarke. I love the painting technique that he uses, and the simplicity of his compositions which are perfectly designed with beautiful vintage-style colour palettes. He has a brilliantly designed website (also inspiring) here. While not a children's book artist exclusively, I've found his work on the cover of Chirp and in the sorely missed Martha Stewart Kids magazine.

When I see the work of artists I admire it sparks something inside my brain and while I often end up creating something utterly different it's that spark that can get me started.

For me, it's all about the furniture. I have "to do" lists where I keep track of what needs to be done for work, including emailing, sketches, final art, updating portfolios, promotion pieces etc. But the biggest help for me was organizing all the supplies. I have a lot of things I need for my work and they all need to fit in a small space.

The first step was this secretary desk, which is where I work on the computer and it holds a huge amount of art supplies. Next to it I have a mini filing cabinet that the scanners sits on. This cabinet holds all the computer/printing supplies. On the other side I have a large filing cabinet that holds all my work files, finished artwork, emails, sketches, printed illustrations, etc. The copier/printer sits on top of that.

There are two other pieces of furniture that complete my "studio". One is a large cabinet with shallow drawers that holds all my large pieces of art and watercolour paper/supplies. The other is a table that I use for my inking and painting.

Now everything has a place and I can actually find the things I need... well most of the time... Read the rest of this post

This is a detail of my illustration for our latest promo for Valentine's Day. I work in watercolour but I find that the computer can be helpful. I start out with a few pencil sketches and try to work out the content and composition. Sometimes this comes easily and sometimes (this time) I take ages trying to come up with something I like. It's nice to get the chance to do something creative though, something that I can make up myself.

At this point I don't worry too much about the exact size. Sometimes I find it easier to sketch things at a small scale so I don't have to get bogged down by all the details.Then I scan the sketch into the computer and use Photoshop to do some tweaking. At this point I can touch up things that don't quite look right and adjust the scale of the whole piece. Sometimes I add a bit of colour just to see how it will work generally. It's very rough, but I can imagine how the final art will look.

Then I transfer the sketch to watercolour paper. I use transfer paper to do this, it's paper covered with graphite. You place your sketch over it and when you trace your sketch with pencil faint lines are transferred to the watercolour paper.
The next step is inking the lines onto the paper. I use a pen with waterproof ink so that the paint won't smudge it. Sometimes I use a nib pen at this stage and bottle ink in black or sepia. I find the lines with a nib pen are more varied in thickness and this can be nice for some pieces. Then finally it's time to paint!

This is an older illustration of mine, some rabbits enjoying the winter weather. It's snowing today so it seemed suitable.

It's maybe a little old-fashioned, as many of my illustrations seem to accidentally become, I don't see these wooden sleds anymore anyway! But at least sledding never goes out of style.

Suit- Illustration Friday for 6/8/07
Originally uploaded by chicken widget.

Hooray! Finally had some time to paint.

Here's a detail of an illustration showing my version of Puss in Boots. This enterprising young cat is modestly winning over the King by presenting him with a rabbit.

And here he is being roared at by the ogre, after he has dared the ogre to prove he can turn himself into a lion... just before he dares him to prove he can turn into a mouse! You can tell he's still the ogre from his telltale bushy red hair.

Well I missed out on adding a dog to the collection on this blog, so I thought I'd throw in a pig illustration. I just finished this one today. Coincidentally it's for Charlotte's Web, which always makes me think of springtime. There are so many great descriptions of the countryside, and of course Wilbur is a spring pig!