Category Archives: Events

Mini Masterpieces

There are only a few hours left to bid on original Australian artworks in the IBBY fundraising auction

Rachel — collage on vintage book board available to buy until 28 Nov 2025

Hello gentle readers. It’s been a while. I’ve just finished a book project, (more on that later) and I’m at the clearing up stage. Putting things to rights in the studio, starting to clear up the house, dipping my toe joyfully into the waters of recreational sewing.

I thought I’d reach out to make sure you’re aware of the IBBY fundraising auction that finishes tomorrow. You can browse all of the items for sale, here. They have been donated by Australian illustrators including me. If you’d like to contribute to this worthy cause, you will need to register to bid, (which is easy), and then go for it! Bidding closes tomorrow 28 November, at 9:00pm AEDT so you don’t have much time.

At the bottom of this post I’ve pasted in a little bit of information about IBBY, so that you can understand why IBBY might be on my radar. They’re all about young people, books for young people and supporting the creators of those books as well. But first, here’s a little background story about these rather unusual artworks.

Anyone who has been following this blog since the very beginning will know that when I started it, I was discovering the joys of altered book art. I was visiting used book fairs, collecting old books, some to read and some to cut up or draw in. After a few years, it seemed to me that altered book art was everywhere; everyone was doing it, and so it interested me less. The simple fact of a drawing being on a book page was not in itself interesting to me any more, although it had been a wonderful breakthrough for me when I was trying to find a medium, style and colour palette for Thunderstorm Dancing. (If you’re curious, go here.)

I still loved the subtle ways in which a drawing could respond to the text on the page, reinterpreting a few words, or taking an ironic look at the subject matter. And found poetry was and still is a delight to me. But I let it recede as my work went in different directions.

Later, I found myself irresistibly attracted to the cloth-covered book boards from vintage hardbound books. I began using them as substrates for drawings and paintings.

Collage has always been an important element in my work, both the paper and scissors kind, and the digital variety. In 2023, IBBY asked me to contribute a mini artwork for their Mini Masterpieces fundraiser and book boards were more or less the right scale. Some playful collages emerged. Below you see Mike, Maxine, Jennifer and Alan. They became my first Party Animals — characters who seemed so alive to me that they virtually wrote their own stories. If you’d like to read their accompanying microfiction stories I now have my Party Animals collected together on their own Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/judywatsoncollage/ and I’ll also add a page for them on this site in the coming weeks. As I make new Party Animals from time to time, they’ll be made available for sale there.

But now to the 2025 IBBY Party Animals!

Rachel and Trent

Trent — collage on vintage book board available to buy until 28 Nov 2025

These two followed their own stars. They look a little different from the 2023 partiers, but this time, they have been wrapped for travel with their own stories enclosed, so that you will know a little bit about them. I recently purchased a 1970s vintage typewriter, and I’ve been writing poetry on it, but I felt I wasn’t quite up to the challenge of typing their stories to the correct size and without a plethora of errors. Instead, I carefully chose a suitable typeface and printed their stories on good paper.

I also contributed three quick dip pen and ink sketches for the fundraiser. They’re based on reference photos of dogs and their owners that I took at a local pet day. You’ll see them here too. Below is the promised information about IBBY. If you’d like to support a wonderful organisation that supports children and the children’s literature community and if you’d like to purchase an original work of art from one of Australia’s book illustrators, then you can’t go wrong throwing in a bid for one of these artworks. Even if you don’t win the auction, you will bump up the price and help IBBY in the process. Good luck!

About IBBY Australia

IBBY Australia is one of 85 National sections of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), and will be turning 60 in 2026.
IBBY is a non-profit organization which helps to build bridges to international understanding through children’s books.
IBBY Australia submits authors and illustrators and their work for several IBBY administered international awards, including:
• the Hans Christian Andersen Award
• IBBY Honour Book List
• the Silent Books collection and
• the Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities list.
You can read more about IBBY on this web site: https://www.ibby.org, and about IBBY Australia here:
https://ibbyaustralia.wordpress.com
or join online here:
https://ibbyaustralia.wordpress.com/join-us/ – we welcome new members!

Three things

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Hello gentle followers. It’s been a while.

Firstly, an update. I’m fortunate enough to be in Adelaide for the month of July courtesy of the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust to undertake a Creative Time Residential Fellowship. I was awarded a Mary Wilson Fellowship, and was supposed to undertake it last year, but we had a few serious health and wellbeing issues in our family at that time and the Trust was kind enough to squeeze me in for this year instead. The Fellowship is named after Mary Wilson, a patron of the trust who has been involved since its inception in 1989 and is passionate about our natural environment, so projects undertaken should have a significant environmental theme. My original intention was to write a non-fiction picture book about an Australian animal, but things have shifted slightly since my application back in May 2022, and instead I find myself writing a verse novel about tadpoles.

One of my other projects is a picture book with a climate theme, but I’m a bit scared of that one. Last time I worked on it the most devastating ear worm attacked me with a doggerel rhythm, and I couldn’t shake it off. I’m scared the worm will attack again, so I’m postponing that project until I’ve gained some writing muscle over the next week or so. I’ve been doing all sorts of keyboard push-ups in preparation. If that worm attacks I will be prepared.

I also made this note for myself and stuck it on the wall. It hasn’t completely worked yet.

*The colour photo is by Melisa Savickas*

I’ll be doing a bit of teaching while I’m in Adelaide. This workshop is at the State Library.
If you’re local to Adelaide, you can click the image to read more about it or make a booking. Below is the delightful Norwood Library. I scooted out to join it the day after I arrived. I can’t survive without a library membership.

So that’s the first thing. The second is that my son Hugo is creating a website for me – a task I have been meaning to get to for years. So this blog will jump across to the website when it’s ready.

I suspect that readers who have subscribed with their email address will be transported across the techno-wilderness and stay on the mailing list. Those WordPress users who follow using the WordPress follow function will probably drop off. So if you still want to hear from me and you haven’t subscribed with an email address, you can do that now, or do it later on at my new website.

I’m planning on having two options. My blog will be about things I have been working on. My newsletter will be occasional notifications of upcoming book releases or exhibitions, for those who are interested in purchasing or attending.

Which brings me to the third thing. For those of you who are in the vicinity of Sydney, the Incognito Art Show is coming up very soon! I am quite envious of those who can visit this show in person. It looks like quite an occasion, judging from photos of previous years. And having gone through the artwork on-line (which takes a while!) I can attest that there are STACKS of fantastic postcard sized artworks up for grabs. They are all at the one price of $100. The screenshots below from the Incognito Instagram account give you an idea of what the walls will look like.

The fun part is that all works are incognito until after purchase. You can read all about it here. And you can register your name on the website to create a wishlist of your favourites here. The best thing of all is that all proceeds go to supporting artists living with a disability.

I’ve currently got over 150 saved in my wishlist, so that says a lot about my inability to make decisions, but also a lot about the gloriousness of the artwork. And I’m not telling ANYONE what my favourites are, because the people who attend in person get first dibs, and I’ll only be in with a chance when the online sale goes live after the in person sale days.

I have three artworks in the show. I can’t show you what they look like of course. But for those who like puzzles, I am including a greyed out version of my artworks with little windows cut into the grey. If you can work out which art is mine from this, you are nothing short of a genius. I’ve only been able to find one of mine on the website so far, and I know what they look like.

13/7/24 I’ve updated to add the actual artwork for this one which has just sold. Titled Family Group. Mixed media A5 size. So many bird people. Where do they all come from?

Believe it or not, I will post again tomorrow, because today I took a day off writing and made some art with limited materials, for the Kickabout! But also because I miss my blog, and I’m a bit disheartened by social media. Cheerio until tomorrow!

Here’s a bonus dog-bird doodle. My dog people and bird people finally met in the middle.

Endpapers (part one)

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Endpapers are a particular favourite of mine, both old and new. I love to create the ends for the books that I illustrate. They’re wonderfully freeing, because they’re not required to go alongside an author’s text, nor do they need to follow along in the exact same style or medium as the other illustrations. They need to feel as though they belong in the same family as the rest of the book, but they can fly off in all sorts of playful directions, and frequently do.

Sometimes it’s lovely to take a purely decorative approach, using whatever medium seems complementary to the book, without direct reference to the story at all. Decorative endpapers may just be stripes, spots or splashes and can look beautiful, as though the reader is opening a brightly wrapped present – which in a way they are!

Mostly, I am so involved with the text that I can’t resist linking the ends to what’s inside. Sometimes I like to refer to a repeating motif in the book such as seagulls, and a little black cat as we see in Thunderstorm Dancing. Or I refer to the setting of the story, such as the forest in Leonard Doesn’t Dance. Sometimes I like to tell a bonus story without words, so that when the book has been read and the story is over, there is somewhere to linger and to imagine our characters in their next adventure or in their everyday lives.

Endpapers for Goodnight, Mice! by Frances Watts and Judy Watson.

Goodnight, Mice! is a bedtime book, so the ends are muted in colour and evocative of a pyjama pattern. But I really wanted to play around a little further with these sweet mice, so I made tiny, simplified sketches of all of the family members. It was fun creating shorthand versions of each of the characters. The twins of course, are causing mayhem with a pillow fight, and there are stylised feathers floating everywhere (made by pressing down hard with my poor, mistreated dip-pen nib).

Mitzi and Billy – up to mischief as usual.

I feel that Clementine will not be happy about this.

Books and bedtime go together like cheese and… mice. So I put lots of books on the ends as well.

I really hope Billy is not going to flush before Mitzi gets off the loo…

This is the original family from the internal illustrations. Still loose, but more fully formed. (That was not a toilet joke.)

The endpapers for Thunderstorm Dancing were originally to have been printed in two colours, which is why I set them up in black and blue, (black and red for the rear ends) but Allen and Unwin decided to print in four colour process instead. In the internal illustrations, I had sneaked in a playful visual gag where the cat is greedily eyeing off all the fish. I thought it only fair that he got to eat his fish in the end. So below you see him washing up after his meal. (The seagulls are not amused.) In this case, I decided to do the reverse of what I had done for Goodnight, Mice! Instead of shrinking and simplifying the characters from the book, I enlarged them and made them more naturalistic in style.

Front endpapers for *Thunderstorm* *Dancing* by Katrina Germein and Judy Watson.

Rear endpapers for *Thunderstorm Dancing*.

This is a detail of the cat as it appears, quite small, in one of the internal illustrations.

Front endpapers for *Leonard Doesn’t Dance* by Frances Watts and Judy Watson

Rear endpapers for *Leonard Doesn’t Dance*.

The ends for Leonard Doesn’t Dance are mostly decorative, but they also set the scene for the story. I wanted them to be sumptuous, because I enjoyed making Leonard’s forest world so much. The front and back ends are continuations of the same setting, except that the moon is lower in the sky after the birds have been partying all night. The party lights can be seen in the distance.

Endpapers from *Searching for Cicadas* by Lesley Gibbes and Judy Watson

These ends are mostly decorative too, but they hint that in this story we will be looking closely at the forest floor. They were a delight to make, involved a lot of glorious inky mess, and they have their very own classroom activity. You can find it here.

Now we get to my latest endpapers – the ends for When You’re Older.

When I was thinking about what kind of endpapers would be best for When You’re Older, one of my ideas included origami sea creatures, and one of them included a paper crown. They looked like this.

There were a few reasons why these ideas might have been fun and effective:

• Firstly, they are bright and cheerful and the scale of the images is large, which made a nice contrast with the fine detail of much of the book.

• Secondly, they are an easy way to communicate to someone choosing a book, that the story is suitable for a young child.

• Thirdly, they help set the opening scene in the homely world of the brother who is enjoying some paper craft. The crown concept shows us a close-up of what he is doing on the title and half title pages. The origami concept gives us an example of something he might do on a different day. And it leads the reader into the theme of sea creatures that repeats throughout the story.

In the end we decided that the treasure hunting scene (below) would be best, because it is truly dreamlike, and hints that we will be entering a world of the imagination. It reflects the illustration style of the adventure part of the book; full of detailed vegetation, creatures real and imagined and with our boys painted in silhouette. But it is subtly different, in that it is rainbow hued and uses blue instead of black for the details of the ship and characters. The blue has a hazy feel and helps to suggest the dream state. The feel of the endpapers is decorative, but it is really a ‘bonus story’.

Endpapers for *When You’re Older* by Sofie Laguna and Judy Watson

I had a second idea for a bonus story and I hoped to have different ends front and back, telling two dream adventure tales. But it would have taken too long to complete. I hope to make the second illustration as a standalone, and if I do it will be available as a print. (It involves a giant squid, deep sea diving and more treasure!)

Two picture books out and about in a strange new world

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This year, while I’ve been lurking in my home studio during Melbourne’s lock-down, two of my picture books have been going around all over the place doing things without me.

CBCA Book Week 2020

Searching for Cicadas has given me a wonderful inside look at the CBCA awards this year, by being shortlisted for the Eve Pownall award. I was intending to get out to schools this Book Week to enjoy the buzz among teachers and students, but due to the lock-down, any school visits would have been via Zoom, and that’s a bridge too far for this phone-phobic introvert. (Although I don’t rule it out later on.)

fabulous Book Week artwork by Gwyn Perkins

But I enjoyed the Book Week buzz on line – the costumes, the amazing books, the teachers doing their thing. I loved the YouTube video presentation of awards. It featured insightful comments from school students of all ages and intimate presentations from book creators; all the more special because of their personal setting in people’s homes. Indigenous Australia—both the people and the land—had a strong and resonating voice. You can view the entire thing here. The judges’ report and a description of all the winning, honour and shortlisted books can be downloaded here. Thankyou CBCA, for the sterling work you do.

Above, Bruce Pascoe talks about Young Dark Emu, a Truer History which won the Eve Pownall Award, and about Australia, our children and the future.

White Ravens 2020

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blutenburg_Castle_in_the_West_of_Munich,_2014_(deux).JPG

A couple of weeks ago, a rather different bit of recognition came my way and I confess to feeling a bit emotional about it when I heard. Far from here, in Obermenzing in the western part of Munich, is a castle full of books. It’s called Blutenburg Castle and is the home of the Internationale Jugendbibliothek, the International Youth Library. It was founded in 1949 by Jella Lepman and it has become an internationally recognised centre for children’s and youth literature. Its central purpose is to ‘promote global children’s and youth literature of high aesthetic and literary quality and of significance for cultural literacy.’ And each year a team of experts select books from all over the world to be named White Ravens and to be presented at the Bologna Children’s Books Fair and the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Of five books from Australia to be named in 2020 The White Ravens – A Selection of International Children‘s and Youth Literature one is Leonard Doesn’t Dance! I’m deeply happy that this warm story by Frances Watts and me has received some recognition. And since Leonard is to dancing, what ravens are to singing, it brings some delightful images to mind…

The gorgeous artwork on the cover of the White Ravens catalogue is by Emma AdBåge. You can see more of her work here.

Dancing with the ravens… a scene from Leonard Doesn’t Dance.

Royal Zoological Society of NSW Whitley Awards 2020

Oh boy! What is a RZS, NSW Whitley award? It’s a celebration of all things nerdy and naturalist. That sounds like my husband. But nope. It’s a book award, this time from the Royal Zoological Society of NSW. ‘Awarded annually, the Whitley Awards are presented for outstanding publications that profile the unique wildlife of the Australasian region.’

I’m happy to say that Searching for Cicadas is a recipient of the award in the children’s story category. You can find the full list here. The beautiful sticker features a sugar glider, who would probably eat my cicadas, but that’s a price I’m prepared to pay. Thank you Royal Zoological Society of NSW.

Curious Creatures Wild Minds (Activity)

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It’s nearly, nearly Book Week 2020! Hurrah! And I love the theme this year.

Perhaps you are at school. Perhaps you are at home school. Either way, here is a game you can play with family, friends or classmates. It’s a drawing game, a writing game, (or could it be an acting game, a dancing game or something else?) and it’s based on something I have found to be true for me. Sometimes it’s easier to start with something, rather than nothing. Sometimes you need a little leg up, before you can go galloping off on your creative journey.

It’s very simple…

Step One. Download the pdf with all of the pages I have prepared for you. (Here is the pdf.) Or download the jpegs if that works better for you. (They’re at the bottom of this post in the Downloads section.)

Step Two. Chop them up and stick them into some bowls or hats or boxes. (If you are a keen scissor user, you will enjoy lots of cutting up beforehand. If you are not so keen, you could do the close-your-eyes-and-stab-with-a-pencil technique, which is similar to the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey technique.)

Step Three. Close your eyes and pull as many or as few selections out as you want. I suggest one head, one body, a couple of personality traits and anything else you want is extra. (But free!)

How many prompts should you choose? Probably you’ll find it easier if you pick only a few prompts. If you have too many prompts you might get into a tangle. Important note: if you don’t like what you pull, chuck it back and try another one. It’s meant to be fun.

Step Four. Draw your Curious Creature and write about its Wild Mind.

Step Five. Teachers and parents are SO GOOD at thinking outside the box, so they will immediately see that this is an open-ended activity and can be used in lots of ways. For example…

Pair off with another person and see what happens when your two Curious Creatures meet. Write about what happens.
Pair off with another person and swap heads. (Not yours, silly. Just the picture.)
Play the Exquisite Corpse game using the word prompts or the picture prompts. If you don’t know how, read this.
Is your bit of writing worth re-writing into a longer story, shorter story, poem, comic strip, same story different character, play or skit?
Stick all the Curious Creatures up on display and choose whichever one you like to write about or draw.
Vote for one of them as President or Prime Minister. Talk about why you chose him or her. What personality traits might be useful for a leader?
Form a group and make a Great Big Very Curious Creature with lots of heads and bodies. Add wings, extra legs, tails, hair, whatever you like.
Make a jungle for all your Curious Creatures.
Which personality traits do you think best describe you? Do you know what all of them mean? (I added some of my favourite words and you might like to look them up.)
Think of a book character in one of your favourite books. Which personality traits might match that character? Can you write a scene that didn’t happen in the book, showing those personality traits?
Can a Curious Creature or a person have two personality traits that don’t seem to match? (For example: cautious and fun-loving, bossy and sensitive, fierce and warm.) Explore!

To show willing, everyone in my family had a little go at this activity last night. And here’s the proof. (One of them wasn’t very willing actually.)

The Chocolate Cat-Astrophe (A Halloween inspired story about a cat-duck at Easter.)

Sidney heard his mum calling and opened his eyes. He was feeling a little sick. He wiped the tell-tale chocolate from his bill. Probably everyone would have mistaken it for mud anyway.

‘Coming, Mum’ he groaned, not sure his voice would carry down to the kitchen. He rolled off the bed and noticed that his furry tummy, usually a graceful 3cm off the floor, was dragging uncomfortably on the shag pile rug as he swayed towards the door.

He opened the door and extended his head out into the corridor. His sister skipped past and grinned at him.

‘Dinner smells great!’ she said. And scampered down the stairs.

‘Burp’ replied Sidney, and dragged himself to the top step. His belly had rolled the lint from the carpet into a fuzzy ball under his belly button. It felt a lot like someone was poking him in the tummy. He tried to ignore it.

‘Hope you haven’t eaten all your chocolate already, Sid.’ she called over her shoulder. ‘It’s apple pie for dessert.’ She disappeared into the kitchen.

Sidney took one step down.

His stomach stayed on the top step.

Sidney took a second step down.

His stomach settled with a sigh on the landing. It refused to move.

Cat bodies are stretchy so Sidney was able to take a third step down. His stomach countered by making a move in the opposite direction. There was an uncomfortable twisting sensation.

‘Sid!’ called a voice from downstairs.

‘Coming’ squeaked Sid.

His stomach took another determined step along the corridor. Away from the stairs. Behind him he felt his back paw open the bathroom door.

He stretched his neck downwards and took in a long, loving sniff of roast dinner.

Then he felt a sharp jerk and his chin bumped the stairs as he was dragged upwards. One, two, three steps.

Sidney grabbed the carpet with his claws.

He saw a blue bathroom light glowing on his white front paws as they clung to the slowly buckling carpet.

Then in a smooth, powerful movement like a heavy sea swell, Sidney and the carpet were pulled backwards into the bathroom.

The door slammed shut.

Downloads

The PDF with all the pages in one document is here. (You might need a pdf reader on your computer to open and print the pages. If you don’t have a pdf reader of some kind you can download one of those free from here.)

entire-activity Download

The jpeg versions are below.

Thunderstorm Dancing live performance

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Late last year I was excited to get a message from Colleen who teaches at Currimundi Special School in Queensland asking for permission to use projected images from Thunderstorm Dancing at an end of year concert.

Paul Coppens, founder of the Melbourne Philharmonic Orchestra, composed a piece of music to accompany the children’s performance, and provided a full orchestral backing track. The result was spectacular.

I wasn’t able to go up to see the performance, but I have seen a video on Paul’s website. You can see it here. (You’ll find the ’Thunderstorm Dancing‘ link at the bottom right of the screen.) It is only six minutes long and a delight. Thank you so much, Paul.

When I saw the book I was immediately inspired not only by the words but especially the pictures. These were my inspiration and the writing from then on was easy. So thank you very much. These school children are also an inspiration so combining all these elements, and seeing their reaction was my gratification. (Paul Coppens)

It makes me so happy to see the book used in this way. It is ideally suited to the classroom. The end of the performance is a stroke of genius by the teachers. Bravo!

ILF Spinifex Writing Camp

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My first work with the Indigenous Literacy Foundation

Here are Gregg, me, Tina, Cindy and Ann. About to take to the skies.

A little way down is a brief write up of my June trip to Tjuntjuntjara. I wrote it for the IBBY newsletter after I got back. Quite a lot has gone on since then, but I’ve not had the time and head space to write blog posts. But it’s time to start catching up before I forget how to blog. So I’m cheating and putting the IBBY story up here to get started. If the style seems a little unlike my usual, it’s because I had to keep it to 400 words so there was no room for shenanigans!

And before we go on, I LOVED my trip to Tjuntjuntjara, but it was scary because:

• I had never participated in a school creative camp before and the team did not have any definite plans beforehand. We were making up the program as we went along, according to the needs of the kids, which were unknown until we got there. So I couldn’t really prepare much beforehand. (Although, in hindsight, I should have had more of a go at this!)

• I am not a confident flier and I had to catch three planes each way, one leg being on a light plane. (I could phrase that better, but I’m quite liking the mental image of myself balancing with one leg on a light plane, the other… who knows where? on an albatross, perhaps.)

• I am not, as yet an experienced public speaker, despite the best of intentions…

• my back is jiggered at the moment so the trip was bound to be uncomfortable.

Here’s my 400 word write up!

In June I travelled with ILF staff Tina and Cindy, and author illustrators Gregg Dreise and Ann James to Tjuntjuntjara, an aboriginal community in WA, 550 km east of Kalgoorlie. There we spent an intense three days working with the students to produce a story and artwork to be published next year.

Ten children participated in the writing camp; only two from Tjuntjuntjara School. The rest had driven across the desert with their teachers from other communities, over 200 km away and two were from Firbank Grammar in Melbourne. The children had spent a day getting to know each other before we got there.

Gregg Dreise, a talented extrovert, performed songs, drew, painted, talked, led story making sessions and taught the kids to paint and throw boomerangs. His modified didgeridoo, the ‘didgeridon’t’, was a happiness generating kid-magnet. Gregg was our Batman Utility Belt. He could do anything.

IMG_1847 the didgeridont.jpg

Ann James has a quiet, accessible manner of talking, as though she’s sitting around a kitchen table, even when she’s up in front of a crowd. On the first day Ann deftly demonstrated the art materials that we brought. She encouraged the kids to dive in and try everything before finding their favourite medium, and then supported them in producing a series of illustrations for their writing over the latter two days of the camp.

(Note: here she technically IS sitting around a kitchen table. We did all of our art workshops in the kitchen, while Tilly cooked up wonderful, healthy food for students and teachers.)

I was able to scan some of the first day’s work and whizz them up in PhotoShop with some text to show the students how their work might look on a printed page. Working with the kids one-on-one over the next two days as they revised their writing and worked up their illustrations, I felt so privileged. Some were shy to begin with but we connected very quickly by sharing ideas about their work. It was an intimate and enriching experience and fabulous to witness their stories taking physical form. I can’t wait to see the artwork again after has become a book published by the ILF.

IMG_6650 one on one

Here I am being blown away by the two boys’ work. These two were fabulous at drawing characters. They were around the same age as my boys so I was on familiar territory.

Tjuntjuntjara Principal Charlie Klein pulled all the different parts of the day together for the kids, making sense of everything, and memorably making them write for their dinner and their beds at the end of each day on a giant roll of brown paper. We had to do it too on the last day. The kids told us we were cheating if we drew pictures.

Ready, set, write!

By the way, if you want to donate to the ILF, go here. They do great work!

More pics, in no particular order

Here I am talking about how I illustrate, and Ann is photographing my feet ;-)

Here’s Charlie preparing the students to write for their supper.

frozen kangaroo tails

Tilly Klein reading one of the many books donated by the ILF on the new reading mat.

blobs can be addictive.

Teachers and students were all trying out the different art materials. There were many periods of quiet activity, despite the number of people busy in the kitchen.

IMG_0828 jemima.jpg

IMG_0829 Daisy.jpg

‘Welcome to Tjuntjuntjara’ song led by Charlie on Ukelele

IMG_6696 jump.jpg

Bookplates on Exhibition

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The Australian Bookplate Award is running its exhibition until the 19 December at Library at The Dock , 107 Victoria Harbour Promenade, Docklands. I haven’t been down to see yet, but it looks as though at least one of our family bookplates will be part of the exhibition, judging from this lovely newspaper article. Click the link below to visit the article.

Under the covers: bookplates offer a window into ‘untold histories’

Robert Littlewood with some of the bookplates included in the exhibition.

Robert Littlewood with some of the bookplates included in the exhibition. Photo: Joe Armao

A Geoffrey Ricardo design.

A Geoffrey Ricardo design. Photo: Joe Armao

A Dianne Fogwell design.

A Dianne Fogwell design. Photo: Joe Armao

A Megan Fisher design.

A Megan Fisher design. Photo: Joe Armao

A Judy Watson design.

A Judy Watson design. Photo: Joe Armao

A Larissa Macfarlane design.

A Larissa Macfarlane design. Photo: Joe Armao

My husband Scott thinks that bookplates bear a remarkable similarity to wine labels in many respects. I hadn’t thought of that (surprisingly) but had compared them with stamps. I can imagine opening a bottle of Amelia Beecroft Pinot Grigio though, it’s true.

I’m surprised that this biennial award doesn’t attract more entries. It’s a rather fascinating art form and so wonderfully relevant to book illustrators. It seems an especially appealing project for schools to participate in as well. But as I discovered The Australian Bookplate Design Award only this year, perhaps others too will fall in love with bookplates in the near future.

Federation Square drawing and chatting tomorrow (13th June)

Book Signing Phobia

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Here’s a lesser known part of the job of being a drawing machine. When we sign books for people, it is a nice thing for them if the signature comes with a little doodle, drawn for them, right before their very own eyes. And it’s nice to be able to do that for them. It makes us happy too. If it works.

But the inscription is done in pen and can’t be rubbed out or corrected.

And when we draw during the usual course of our day, we usually do many drafts of any illustration before we get it right.

And if we mess up our inscription doodle we have the problem of either sending a deplorable doodle out into the world defacing the otherwise pristine title page of a newly purchased book, or replacing the book with a new one… which we might also mess up.

Now remember that some of us are very temperamental drawing machines, the kind whose engines won’t start unless the key is turned in just the right particular way, may never run very well on a Tuesday, and if the oil runs low we are likely to smoke. You will now realise that the aforementioned anxieties at the back of our minds can cause a little fumble in the fingers; a wobble in the wrist; a twitch in the felt-tip… and then…

Doom!

That is why I am practising my book signatures today.

With Best Fishes – practising my book signing today and this is page four. Ahem.

I have spoken to illustrators who say they won’t do it any more. They will write anything but won’t draw. (And I’m not even going to discuss the issue of spelling difficult names correctly… or easy names for that matter.)

I have spoken to illustrators who say ‘it’s important to make the mark.’

I have watched with awe, some illustrators who sign and doodle with ease.

I have watched with awe, one illustrator who was CLEVER enough to get a rubber stamp made up in advance! (Yes, OtherJude, that was very clever!)

And I have used my bookmark giveaways to circumvent this problem with some success. (It’s much less stressful to draw on a bookmark, than a $25 book.)

Anyway, see you at the next book signing!

I’m ready.

I think.

Enjoy your bookmark!

Rachel and Trent

About IBBY Australia

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This year, while I’ve been lurking in my home studio during Melbourne’s lock-down, two of my picture books have been going around all over the place doing things without me.

CBCA Book Week 2020

White Ravens 2020

Royal Zoological Society of NSW Whitley Awards 2020

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Downloads

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My first work with the Indigenous Literacy Foundation

Here’s my 400 word write up!

More pics, in no particular order

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