Category Archives: For Sale

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!

Federation Square drawing and chatting tomorrow (13th June)

Book Signing Phobia

1 Reply

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!

Little Cats (or patience is a virtue)

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I was led off the trail of birds this afternoon. I had an important task to complete that was overdue. Lisa S contacted me many months ago to ask about my Cornish Rex artwork and she has been waiting patiently in New York for a signed copy of Thunderstorm Dancing for a long time. Boy is she tired!

Because she has been waiting so long, she got some little bonuses in her bundle. Some Cornish doodles. Lisa has two Cornish Rex cats. One is black (Nigel). One is white (Finley).

Check out Finley with my Cornish Soliloquy drawing from last year.

Here’s the title page from The Cornish Soliloquy

Here’s adorable Finley!

Today, I have finally wrapped up a signed copy of Thunderstorm Dancing for Lisa and it will go into the post tomorrow, bedecked with cats.

Tucked into the book:

White Cornish Rex on Endpapers JudyWatsonArt lores

A little white Cornish sketch painted on the endpapers of ‘The Book of British Villages’. I was going to paint him on a map of Cornwall, but I got engrossed in this one instead.

The little white cat with his friend the black cat, drawn on a (terrible) 1980s dress pattern

Thunderstorm Dancing all wrapped up:

Ready for the post bag

And finally, a doodle on the envelope:

parcel ready for stamps

When I was at the post office a few days ago, the only stamps they had were husky dogs… That’s not going to go down well! Fingers crossed there are some stamps there tomorrow that are more feline friendly.