Cornish Cat working on the weekend :)

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profile alice cat judywatsonart loresPhew! That’s half the spread fixed.

I spent a day on Thursday working on this page, and was really unhappy with the results at the end of the day, so it was back to the drawing board and a re-work of this character group. It might not have mattered so much if it were a busy page. But this is a section of the still page. It has to be right…

err… now I’m looking and finding a few things I might tweak… But not today. Time to spend time with my boys.

So the page 25 Cat-Called-Thunder and Alice are working to my satisfaction. I’ve just got to finish off the seven other members of the family! (laughs hysterically)

 

Cornish clock-watching

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cornish watching fish judywatsonart loresNo time to talk today. Here’s the Cat Called Thunder watching a flying fish… or is he watching the clock?

Two pictures to complete and then all is done!

 

Less is More : More is More

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Less is More in many things, and in picture books for the young, this is often the case.

With books for the very young, there are good reasons for this, relating to a small child’s ability to focus, learn and enjoy their experience of a book. For older readers, it can be more about style and composition.

piano stool colour sketch

piano stool colour sketch

Many of the pages in Thunderstorm Dancing will have complex layering. Often this is about providing a contrast with the more spare, dramatic, or still places in the spreads. This piano stool for instance, rough-hewn as it is, has a pleasing simplicity for me, but it will barely be seen amid the deliberate clutter of an interior scene in Thunderstorm Dancing. On this spread, the left hand clutter will contrast the right hand spareness, and mark a transition from real world to fantasy world.

Hopefully all this will work in the finished book. But I also look forward to a time in the near future when I can make a book that stops here; with the stool and the scrubby smear of shadow, the flash of colour. All on a plain or very minimal background. Something about this kind of simplicity works so well with the printed word on the page, and picture books are one of the few places where we can enjoy this bold, sweet and simple effect. It’s a big part of why I love picture books so much.

Title Page complete

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Yes! I have just delivered the title page illustration for Thunderstorm Dancing.

It’s not the last picture to finish, but it feels significant.

cornish cats in the grass judywatsonart lores

Here are some Cornish Rex cats in the grass; working sketches for the title page group.

Tommy title page snippetAnd a fragment of the finished image. Tommy, bucket in hand, off to play on the sand dunes with brother, sister, dog and cat!

It’s understood that only picture book Cornish Rex cats and Whippets will play on the sand dunes in windy weather with a storm on the horizon.

Thanks goodness for my hard-earned Picture Book Licence. :-)

 

Pecking Order

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I’m feeling rather exhausted this evening. So I drew our chickens to give myself a lift. I started the beginnings of a pecking order diagram. I’m quite fascinated by how this might be done, because the order is not linear in any clear sense. Below is the Official Order. But there are weird aberrations in the middle where certain chickens are scared of other chickens. And there’s one vicious triangle… Hmmm.

Those two devilish looking youngsters at the bottom will grow larger than all the rest. I have therefore introduced them to the flock as babies so that their elders can keep them in their place before they grow unwieldy in size. (According to what I have read, pecking orders rarely change once established… unless the circumstances are unusual and special and particularly particular…)

But according to what I have read, pecking orders follow a simple linear hierarchy.

In my experience this is not the case.

chicken pecking order colour flat

On a secondary note, I’m sure you will be pleased to know that I have now had all my chickens expertly colour analysed by an image consultant. So they will never, NEVER be seen looking anything but their best when they go out to parties. I can vouch for this without a doubt.

Vita, surprisingly, is a summer. But we did not establish which kind of summer. This is because, as Annabel pointed out, the rules of colour may be different for chickens! Well that’s awkward! Now we’ll have to write a book about it!

Hilda is a deep winter, Poppy is a warm autumn, Stella is a deep autumn, Storm is a soft summer and so is Nora. The Terrible Pteranodon Twins are cool winters. Their legs are green and so will be their eggs one day.

Swinging in the rain

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Tommy storm fragment

Sent off a spread this afternoon. Finishing details on another now.

Closer, closer, inch by inch.

 

Still thundering on

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lucyt and floorboardsIt’s a whippet play bow.

Bow-wow.

Getting there.

 

endpapers instead of Endpapers

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I’m working flat out to finish Thunderstorm Dancing before the end of the month, so I haven’t much time to post here. Nor is there much to post, because the illos for the book are under wraps until publication… apart from small snippets.

Yesterday I finished the endpapers for the back of the book. Today I’ll hopefully finish the front endpapers. I suppose it could be okay to post a bit of an endpaper on Endpapers.

Here’s part of the back endpapers.

Cornish Cat called Thunder

Cornish Cat called Thunder with seagulls and afternoon tea

And here’s my very hurried 52 Week Illustration Challenge contribution for this week (Under the Sea) which I made with some leftover fish bones drawn for Thunder endpapers. I’m sure leftover fish bones are an under-utilised art material…

This didn’t really work, because I was hurrying so much. Having said that, the imperfect, rough edges on everything are deliberate. I like the rough prickliness of the pasted fish and seaweed drawings, which gives them a fossilised or desiccated look.

Halloween Under the Sea

Halloween Under the Sea

Both of these works are made using drawings done with Prismacolour Artstick, scanned and coloured in PhotoShop, on top of watercolour and ink background washes.

Oh, and lastly, just this little fragment from one of my illustrations for the book. (The lightning page.) I love the close-up sections of some pages, with none of the action or figures present, making them abstract. This one reminds me of the skin of a whale swimming deep underwater. I feel I should paint a whale eye and put it in one corner. Perhaps later, when all is done.

Thunder lightning sky fragment

Thunder lightning sky fragment

 

Camperdown Sam

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This post is to introduce you to Camperdown Sam. During our school holiday visit to Camperdown, on our first walk into the main street we met with various delightful local animal characters.

One local was Fred (Who belongs to Ted), a dog of strongly suggestive Border Terrierishness x Australian Terrierishness, who came from a rescue centre. (And according to Ted’s wife, I am completely wrong about his breeding.) We have yet to acquire some photos of Fred with ears aloft. They were lovely. More on Fred another time.

photo 1

Here’s Fred. It was hard to locate the crank handle to get him to lift his ears. These went up periodically to display neat, soft Border Terrier style ears but with tufts flying like pennants from the tips. I am determined to get a photo of those ears by any means necessary!

One was Sam. Sam looked at a distance like a small thundercloud. All furious black fluff, glaring yellow eyes, and very round. (Way too round for his own good.) But as Sam found himself being observed in his driveway, he demonstrated his highly social character by rushing over to introduce himself to us up close.

What with all the weaving, winding, and waving of his tail, Sam didn’t stand still long. At least that is the lame excuse I am giving for my poor photography. I was also stroking at the same time as photographing.

Sam in shadow

Sam in shadow – Check out that tummy, nearly touching the ground.

photo 1-1

Feather boa tail

photo 3-2 photo 4-1 photo 2 photo 4-2

Alright, so you get the idea.

Well, I’m only just getting started on Sam. I think he’s a lot of fun to paint. He’s so inky. But I’ve other work to do first.

Sam says happy birthday Ann James lores

For Ann James’s birthday I did this first Sam sketch. Poor Sam has been scandalously misrepresented in temperament. But it was so much more fun to draw him as a grumpy thundercloud cat. Especially wearing a party hat.

Camperdown Sam no tail judywatsonart lores

Then I did a couple of other quick ink paintings for the 52 Week Illustration Challenge (theme this week black & white… handy). This first cartoon Sam is ink with digital scribble on top. I don’t think it is a success. It could be, if I re-do the face or even just the eyes, but not at the moment. Anyway, his tail got lost off the edge of the page. Never mind.

Camperdown Sam judywatsonart lores

This one, I like. And here he is smiling, as Sam did in person. Note: I could have depicted them better, but I have tried to include the cute tufts of fluff that poke up between long-haired cats’ toes. I’ve made them too spiky, not clumpy enough here, so they look more like claws.

And now back to the last illos for Thunderstorm Dancing.