Tag Archives: books

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!

The Kick-About #125 ‘the Rorschach Test’ (part 1)

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Most people are familiar with the Rorschach Test invented in 1921 by Hermann Rorschach. It‘s so often used as a gag in a cartoon or a sitcom that even youngsters get the general idea. It’s a psychological test, where a patient looks at the ink blot and describes what they see in it – often an animal, face or scene.

But I wasn’t aware that Klecksography was a thing in the late 19th century. Making images from ink blots, it’s an activity that I often enjoy as a warm-up exercise for drawing, and to create new characters. I usually call it blob drawing, which isn’t nearly as fancy, but I suppose my blobs are a bit more blobby in shape than blotty, and they lack the symmetry too.

I thought this prompt was a great opportunity to join in the Kick-About again, because I already have some artwork to begin with, and it’s not my collection of blob drawings. It’s this illustration (below) from my upcoming picture book with Kyle Mewburn, Jo and the NO. In this illustration, Jo traverses ‘lakes as still as mirrors’. So creating background mountains and their reflections from Rorschach-style inkblots seemed like a good idea.

Here the NO in the back of the punt seems to be observing itself in the still waters because I wanted to suggest self reflection as well as the physical reflection of the scenery. You’d think it would be easy to whip up a few inkblots and plonk them into the image. But it was surprisingly hard to get from the successful rough illustration (below) to a successful final illustration.

The original sketch started as a thumbnail drawing, intended to share a double page spread with three other vignettes. But when we decided that the book was going to 40 pages this scene acquired a double page spread of its own with the impediment of the gutter down the middle of the illustration. So getting the balance of the illustration to work again in a different format was a challenge. The enlarged range of mountains and trees when loaded together on the page, very quickly distracted from and overwhelmed our protagonists, instead of highlighting them and giving significance to them.

Also I didn’t want my reflections to be perfect, because imperfect things are always more interesting and have more visual energy. But I found that if they were too interesting, they became distracting. So there was a lot of trial and error involved with recreating the transparent freshness of the rough sketch within a new framework.

Below are a few of the monotypes I produced to create islands and mountains for the background. I painted a loose shape, suggestive of an island with vegetation, and then folded the paper in half for the reflection.

Below are some of the more detailed experiments, testing out graphite instead of paint. These fell into the too distracting category. There are always countless illustrations made for a picture book (some of them very time consuming) that don’t make the final cut. But they may be interesting in their own right.

And I have to include the other hand-made element – a little collage boat made from Ingres paper and soft pastels. It’s so nice and wonky. One of my favourite bits.

For the final art, I did end up using a digital reflection for some elements, and those reflections did become ‘perfect’. But most of the tree reflections were drawn by hand and so they don’t perfectly match their right-side-up counterparts. (This brings about a nice effect used by landscape architects, where a repeating pattern with small variations is pleasing but never monotonous.) Embracing these inconsistencies was part of my journey of letting go of hard rules.

More on Rorschach ink blots in the next post. In the meantime, anyone who is interested in pre-ordering Jo and the NO, please click here or on the cover image below.

Hazel’s Treehouse – floriferous!

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Hazel’s Treehouse is a new collection of gentle junior fiction stories from Walker Books Australia. It’s written by Zanni Louise, illustrated by me in dip pen and ink and it’s wrapped in flowers from its embossed hard cover and purple endpapers, through each of the ten stories to the creator biographies at the end.

Zanni’s a talented and prolific author across all age groups from the very young to YA, and she’s also an adept teacher. So I was delighted to be offered her stories to illustrate. You can check out her other books here if you haven’t already come across them.

Everyone except Odette is cloud gazing. Odette is bouncy so she’s rolling down a hill somewhere.

The book came out at the start of November amid an exuberance of spring flowers in our garden and local surrounds, because we’re lucky enough to live opposite a creek reserve and just down the road from a retired reservoir set in native bushland. I loved taking my advance copies of the book out for walks in the bush and photographing it against whatever was in bloom. There’s a floral sampling below, including some of the show-offs and some of the delicate species that people may overlook. In much of Australia, harsh weather, shallow topsoil and unreliable rainfall have combined to evolve plants that conserve energy with small blooms and avoid dehydration with sparse leaves. These plants are quietly beautiful and tough.

Zanni referred to several Australian flower species in her text, and because I had worked in nature conservation and had a horticultural husband brimming with indigenous plant nerdiness, it was an easy thing to embrace those references and run with them. I chose a plant to begin each story – whichever seemed the best fit (and that I felt capable of drawing!) Some of them were mentioned in the text and some were appropriate for other reasons. Christmas Orchids (Calanthe triplicata) adorned the Christmas story ‘A Very Tiny Day’. Coast Banksia (Banksia integrifolia) was used for ‘A Beach Day’ – even though the gang never made it to the beach. (You’ll have to read it to find out what they did instead, but they still managed to use their goggles and flippers.) Sometimes, if there was no obvious link, it was an opportunity for me to feature some of my personal favourites, like Hibbertia or Pimelea.

Christmas Orchids (*Calanthe triplicata*) for the Christmas story ‘A Very Tiny Day’

Walter demonstrates the correct method for cooking Christmas pudding. (Flour instead of flower here.)

Coast Banksia (*Banksia integrifolia*) for ’A Beach Day’

Tiny demonstrates the correct fit for goggles in ‘A Beach Day’. (Shown with some wet looking Wallaby Grass)

When I first noticed the plant references in the text, I was looking for clues to the location. The setting for any story is also a major ‘character’ in the story, creating an atmosphere, a flavour, and the physical framework into which our reader can immerse themself. So it’s one of the first things that I’m feeling for when I’m reading a manuscript for the first time. I thought that Zanni might have chosen plants local to a particular area where she’d prefer to see her stories illustrated. But the plants she mentioned are found all over Australia, and in some cases nowhere near each other. This told me that my setting was an imaginary location in a magical Australia, so… no rules! But for the most part, I’ve illustrated this imaginary place as a Grassy Woodland.

The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage describes Hazel’s surroundings to a tee: The Grassy Woodlands are a widespread and quintessential feature of rural Australia. Dominated by eucalypts, typically boxes and red gums, grassy woodlands have a relatively open canopy with sparsely distributed shrubs and a conspicuous and diverse ground cover of tussock grasses and herbs. Ephemeral grasses and herbs appear from seed banks following rain, while ground orchids and lilies emerge after fires to produce a spectacular floral display.

Walter, Hazel and Tiny (very small!) collect flowers in ‘Someone’s Special Day’

Hazel’s Treehouse has already been met with a flowering of warmth and enthusiasm from readers and reviewers. There’s much more to share about the process of illustrating it, but it seemed right to mention the flowers before the close of the last day of spring!

Oh, and here’s 54 seconds of baby Eastern Rosellas in the nest box in our garden, looking exactly like muppets.

For more details about Hazel’s Treehouse, and to read some extracts of reviews, click here.

Bookplates – just for fun

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A few weeks ago I noticed on an artists’ noticeboard that there was an Australian Bookplate Design Award coming up. Not being sure what a bookplate actually was, I read with interest. I quickly concluded that it was just my cup of tea. Books, cups of tea and small, quirky collectible artworks go together perfectly. If you’re interested, try searching the internet or Pinterest with the search terms ‘artist bookplate’ or ‘ex libris’. There are some amazing ones out there, and they are so wonderfully varied in style.

Best of all, there were several categories for entry into the competition, including one for primary school students. We have two of those in the house.

Arthur (12) drew his bookplate about ten minutes after I flagged the idea, without any preliminary work apart from a little research into the meaning of his name and his sun sign. In keeping with the traditional model of a bookplate (the coat of arms of the book owner), he came up with a kind of avatar for himself; a heraldic creature with roots in the notion of courage, and I suspect some DNA from Chewbacca of Star Wars fame. See below.

Arthur’s heraldic beast bookplate

Hugo (10) decided at the last minute to join in, and only because he was home from school with a cold at the time and looking for a quiet activity. His process was admirably logical, beginning with a warm up, and ending with a bookplate. See below.

Stage One: loosening up, exploring ideas

Stage Two: brainstorming birds and books

Stage Three: I love this. From top to bottom, working out the composition and the gag.

Stage 4: The final bookplate.

I made my two entries in a rush on the final day as well, thereby cleverly avoiding thinking out what my perfect bookplate design would be… ahem. I’ll show you my bookplates in the next post.

We sent them off to be digitally printed and trimmed, then raced them to the post office the next day for last minute delivery into the competition. This involved the boys signing each of their bookplates with very sharp pencils in very small writing at the post office; a fun and exciting process in itself!

Finally, on the weekend, we tested out our bookplates on real books! Which was SUPER fun, even though some were a bit crooked, and as you will see below, some interesting questions came up about the hierarchy of ownership. For instance if your big cousin wrote her name in the book in 2002 with silver pen on the right hand side, do you trump that with your own hand designed bookplate pasted into the left hand side in 2015?

And does that depend on how big your cousin is?

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!

Meet me at Federation Square

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If anyone is in the vicinity of Melbourne on Sat 13 June, I’ll be drawing at the Books Illustrated stall in Federation Square Book Market and the fabulous Ann Haddon will be selling signed copies of Thunderstorm Dancing by Katrina Germein, illustrated by me. Some of my other books will also be on sale.

Drawing and signing at Bologna Children’s Book Fair (In front with the green scarf, the lovely Sonia who has been attending the fair every year since she was a child.)

Come and say hello. I’d love to meet you! I love people to talk to me when I’m drawing… not sure what I’ll be drawing… but it’ll be something. And I’ll try to bring along some stormy craft sheets for you to take away and use to have some arty fun with your little ones… or by yourself. I’m all for that too.

Sketch for dancing scene with Poppy, from Thunderstorm Dancing by Katrina Germein

At this stage it looks like I’ll be starting at around 1pm and drawing for a couple of hours, but I’ll try to remember to update you on that a little closer to the time.

Catching up

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Hello! I’ve been a bit absent! Thunder is finished and off to the printers! I’m looking forward to seeing an advance copy in early January. It’s taken a few weeks to just get myself into drawing again. That’s not something I anticipated. And there are a lot of other things that I need to catch up with now that I’ve finished that mammoth project… including Christmas!

I had a great day with Ann James and Justine Alltimes last Monday, designing a poster for Jackie French, our Australian Children’s Laureate. Her project Share a Story will revolve around the ideas on the poster/calendar which will be available for free download by Christmas.

Ann James is a well known and skilled Australian children’s illustrator. Justine Alltimes is one of the hardworking and capable Laureate Project Managers. When the three of us get together, the ideas ping about like pinballs. After Ann had drawn and painted some images, I was able to alter them digitally to make new, and hopefully intriguing combinations, that will work well together on the poster and spark the storytelling imaginations of children, teachers and parents. The challenge was to avoid the literal interpretations of words like Slurp a Story and instead to come up with images that were open-ended or suggestive. We want starting points for stories, not stories in themselves.

More on Share a Story when the poster is released.

Other work in progress includes an illustration of Phar Lap for the front cover of a colouring book for the Melbourne Museum to match the dinosaur one I did a couple of years ago. As always with work done for Museum Victoria, I learn heaps along the way as I research the topic! Glad to find out that Phar Lap was probably not deliberately or even accidentally poisoned. Not that it made much difference to the poor horse, but he most likely died of colic related to a rare disease of the intestinal tract.

The 52 Week Illustration Challenge forges on towards the finish, but will return next year. I wasn’t feeling like drawing for this either, for a couple of weeks. So I’ve missed Week 47 New York, but I may go back to that. Although drawing New York itself holds little attraction for me, the New Yorker and its famous cartoons hold enormous appeal for me. So I think I need to do a New Yorker style cartoon. But of what?…

A page from ‘Tim and Tig’

Above is an illustration I did for Aussie Nibble – Tim & Tig many years ago. I illustrated Tim and Tig just after receiving a copy of the Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker; a fantastic book that had a powerful influence on my drawing! Many of the illos in Tim and Tig, I’d wish to do again and much better, but this one I still like.

Now that I think of it, I did do some quick doodles for Week 46 Circus. (Oh dear. What a rambling post.)

The Twisted Princess tidies her tresses

This doodle was on the bottom of a Thunder illustration. You may see a wee peek of the washy water top right, and it ran completely off the page. It started as a doodle and then I got mesmerised by the leotard pattern. Actually, this led my mind off in the direction of a series of paintings I’d like to do…

This brings me to last week’s theme. Week 48 Fox. In a shocking twist of fate, I found that the topic had long ago been changed from Chicken to Fox! Horrors!

I did some fox doodles while I was waiting for the kids to get out of drama class and below you can see them.

Deadly Maggie

This was a fennec sketch in an old book. I added some digital colour experimentally (even though fennecs are creamy in colour). It’s not entirely successful but there are elements of it that I like, including the scratching into top layers of colour; a Thunder habit that may continue for some time. Perhaps lead into interesting new areas.

A very innocent young blob fox.

By contrast, this little blob fox is not deadly. This was my protest on behalf of my chickens.

Contortionist fox

I liked the tail hatching on this one, and also the two tone retro feel, but it was certainly rushed. Not what you’d call finished work.

The Fox with the No.6 Tattoo

Lastly, this fellow. The fox with the No. 6 Tattoo. I liked his eyes and expression. He seems to have a canny and sophisticated air about him. I added some very flat colour panels in Photoshop trying to keep it sympathetic to his stylised and simple form and I like the result.

thundercloud in progress

Working hard, drawing and painting Katrina Germein’s picture book Thunderstorm Dancing. I might post some random weather fragments occasionally but can’t show you much until it’s finished…. and I’ll come out from under that cloud ;-) hopefully very soon.

Wish me luck!

Judy Watson

author illustrator artist

Tag Archives: books

Mini Masterpieces

Rachel and Trent

About IBBY Australia

The Kick-About #125 ‘the Rorschach Test’ (part 1)

Hazel’s Treehouse – floriferous!

Bookplates – just for fun

Federation Square drawing and chatting tomorrow (13th June)

Book Signing Phobia

Meet me at Federation Square

Catching up

Rachel and Trent

About IBBY Australia

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