Sneak-peak

Beware the Jabberwock my Son!

Horace the Intergalactic Explorer

In 1998 I wrote a children's story called 'Horace the Intergalactic Explorer'. I envisaged it as a pop-up book but it was a bit half baked and the mechanisms were simplistic.

However at it's heart was a gentle environmental message about conservation.

I decided that the original version wasn't very good but a couple of years ago I decided to rework it with heavily rewritten story and much more sophisticated pop ups. I must admit to owing a huge debt of inspiration to Robert Sabuda, and Matthew Reinhart two artists who have pushed the limits and scope of what was possible in pop up publishing.

This is how it's progressing.

A pop up WIP

This is a small book art project I started a long time ago that was put aside and forgotten. I thought I'd share it with you. I might get around to finishing it some day.

Huldrfolk, Trollkin and assorted Elfs

I have a sketchbook reserved for the purpose of drawing denizens of the hidden realms. Here are a few scribbles.

A Child Made of Love

Recently I was approached by a playwrite called Matthew McVarish to produce an image for his play "A Child Made of Love" a story about two gay men who long for a child of their own, but as you might expect find that difficult to achieve.

One of the men is a children's writer and writes a story of the same title which I was to design the cover art for. For the brief i was to make the characters look like the actors in the play, a thing that really pushed my skills as portraiture isnt my strong point, and im not a huge fan of caricatures. I am fairly pleased with the result and im looking forward to seeing my work on stage.

http://matthewmcvarish.com/
http://www.tron.co.uk/event/a_child_made_of_love/

Space Alien

It so happens that I am involved with a group called Illustrapedia on flickr, the idea behind the group is that it will become the illustration world's answer to wikipedia, but instead of looking up meanings, you look up images. Every month has a different challenge i.e. Dragons, Dinosaurs, Witches etc.

Well this month was 'Space Aliens' and also was the first time i took part and this is what i came up with. Conveniently it kind of coincides with my outerspace storybook, so this will give you a taster of what that will hopefully be like.

Down in the Woods

I have been taking part in a group collaboration with a group of illustrators who got together after competing in the 'Picture This' competition. here is the link http://www.flickr.com/groups/illustrationcollaboration/

The idea was a simple one. We would work on a stream of consciousness or 'exquisite corpse' sketchbook, the first person would produce an image and the beginning of a story and the next contributor would then, in response to the first, continue the story and so on to the next person.

Well it finally came round to my turn and this is what I produced.

some fairy sketches

These are some pictures from my sketchbook that i thought i'd share with you. They were the work in progress for my character design for Bessie-Belle from 'Freddie and the Fairy'.

Freddie found a Fairy

Spread Number 1 -

Text Copyright Julia Donaldson

A Cat

A Cat