illustrating picture books

This is what the beginning of Daddy's Having a Horse looked like when I first read it, fresh from Lisa Shanahan's computer. You can see that I have started to mark which parts of the story will go on each double page spread—pages 4 & 5, pages 6 & 7 etc.

After reading the story, I did these sketches to work out what some of the characters might look like. Here are Lachlan and Caitlin, in wax crayon and watercolour…

and mum, in pencil.

Here are some pencil roughs I did a little later to show my editor, Mark Macleod, and the author, Lisa Shanahan, how I was planning to illustrate these parts of the story.

Mark and Lisa liked my ideas, so the finished illustrations look pretty much like this, except in colour. However, I don't always get it right first time!

Look at these very early doodles of Reggie and Lu. Can you match them to the illustrations in the book?

The endpapers of the book in hard cover have some of my first sketches of Reggie and Lu on them—have a look.

This is what Reggie and Lu looked like in pencil, when I was doing the roughs.

Here is a photo of my desk while I was doing the final illustrations for Reggie and Lu (and the same to you!). I am quite untidy. You can see the chalk pastels I used—all over the place!

Can you tell what Bear is doing in these scribbles? Can you even tell that it is Bear? It's quite difficult to tell because I drew him really quickly, when I was thinking about the story and how I might illustrate it. I doodled the pictures so I would remember the ideas that were popping into my head.

Look at these drawings for Bear and Chook. I was working out how Bear might stand on top of the mud castle. Do you know which of the two positions my editor, Mark, and I chose? Do you think we made the right decision?

Here are some early sketches and storyboard drawings for Thank You for My Yukky Present, when I was planning what would happen on each page.

Don't the pictures look different without the rainbow colours? I used acrylic paints and chalk pastels to colour them.

Here is one of the artworks from Good Night, Me on my lightbox. I am tracing a rough pencil drawing onto thick, textured watercolour paper, so I can paint on it. The lightbox has a fluorescent light inside it, so I can see through the paper more easily. The picture is the one where the orang-utan is under the sheet. It was probably the easiest illustration to do, but it is one of Andrew Daddo's favourites.

This is the same artwork when I had started to paint it. There are many more layers of paint to go.

Here is my desk when I had nearly finished all the artworks for Good Night, Me.

I have lots of paints—acrylics in big tubes and watercolours in smaller tubes and pans. However the illustrations for Good Night, Me only required a fraction of these colours. Guess which colour I used more than any other.

Look at this pencil rough for the illustration of Emily and Alfie gazing in awe at the colour and grandeur of the inside of the ice cave. It's difficult to imagine, looking at these grey pencil marks on white paper, what the final colour artwork will look like. This is what the author Meredith Hooper and the editor Ana Vivas had to do when they looked at my roughs for Emily and Alfie and tried to envisage how the finished book would look.

Now look at the finished artwork. What a difference! The cave has much more depth and modelling, with the different shades of blue and the shadows. It is easier to imagine the space, the scale, the chill of the ice. You can see that I allowed space around and held back on the texture behind the areas where the words would go on the page. I didn't want my illustrations to interfere with the legibility of the text. The designer, Georgie Wilson, and I worked closely together at every stage of this book so that the type and illustrations would work together on the page as harmoniously as possible.

I am constantly re-evaluating my drawing as I progress from roughs to artworks stage with my illustrations. Compare this pencil rough with its corresponding artwork below. Can you see how a gesture has changed and some outlines have altered slightly? As well as leaving space for the text, I have to be aware of where the centre of the spread will fall (known as the gutter). A strip down the centre of the illustration can often disappear into the gutter, or seem chopped in half or not line up on either side, so it’s important not to put anything important (like a face) in the gutter.

In the finished illustration it is easier for us to differentiate between the mothers and their chicks, with their contrasting colours and textures; I used charcoal sticks and soft chalk pastels for their textural qualities. I limited my palette in the illustrations for Emily and Alfie to the cool colours white, black, grey, mauve and blue of the penguins and their surroundings, with touches of warm orange and yellow on the adults’ plumage, which is echoed in the sunset sky of Emily and Alfie’s homecoming.

The text for this double page spread was, “I can see you, funny bunny.” I started working out how the child and dad would be placed on the page, and how they would be interacting with each other. I tried a few variations in my sketch book. I liked the one where the whole child was visible.

This is the small thumbnail sketch from my storyboard, and the more finished pencil rough. I showed both to Andrew Daddo, my editor, Mark Macleod, and the publisher for their feedback.

And here is the finished illustration, with chalk pastel colour scanned onto my computer and added to the lines of the pencil rough. There are many references to animals in Andrew's text; in the opening pages (when Dad comes to wake the child) I imagined a hibernating animal curled up in a pile of dry leaves, so I decorated the quilt with a pattern of autumn leaves.

The following three pictures show the final stages of the last spread from Cheeky Monkey. This one with lines only—the pencil rough.

The second with the same drawing dropped onto a coloured background.

And the third with colour added—the finished illustration, ready for the book. I swirled on some warm, sunny yellow pastel, radiating out from the centre of the two characters, to complement the emotional content of the image. I find similarities between the building up of layers in Photoshop and the separate inked plates or screens of some of my favourite printmaking techniques.

As you'll have gathered, I do a lot of drawing before I get to the final, coloured stage. I end up with piles of paper covered in doodles, sketches and more finished drawings. Many of my drawings never make it into the book at all.

At this stage I'd drawn the outlines with a waxy Chinagraph pencil, and had just begun to paint the artwork for the opening spread of Bear and Chook by the Sea. I used acrylics paints, just as I did in the first book. It had been eight years since I'd painted Bear and Chook first time around, but luckily I'd kept notes on the shades of paint I'd used for everything, so I was able to dig out that list and make the two characters exactly the same colours in the second book—a nice watery Australian Sienna with touches of Red Oxide for Chook's feathers, and washes of Cobalt and Cerulean Blue on Bear.

Then—many layers of paint later—this is the completed artwork. I wanted Bear and Chook's sleeping arrangements to be symbolic of their relationship. In the first book, Chook always comes out rather the worse for wear in Bear's ventures. Here, even in repose, Chook's comfort is at the mercy of Bear's every move. If Bear turns over in his hammock, Chook's little basket bed will swing precariously. When Bear gets out of bed, Chook will plunge to the floor!

The colours of Chook's plumage and the rug on the ground looked a lot brighter before I washed plenty of transparent Midnight Blue paint over them to suggest the half-light of Bear and Chook's night-time packing.

And now, with the lights off.

I had just started painting this artwork, and in this photo it is drying under a thermal lamp (that's why it looks so orange). You can see that the watercolour paper has been stretched onto a board and fixed down with gummed brown paper tape, to prevent the paper from cockling when it's wet from all the washes of paint. A nice, flat artwork scans much better than a curling, wavy one.

Here is the finished artwork. I have soaked and peeled off the brown paper tape. Can you see the trim marks at the top of the paper? They tell the designer where I intend the edges of the pages to be. Illustrators paint colour out beyond the edges of the printed page (this is called the bleed) because we don't want any slivers of white paper showing at the edges of the illustrations.

This artwork—the final spread—is half painted. Chook doesn't yet have his red comb and wattle and there are no shadows or texture on Bear's fur. You may have noticed that the first book is open on my desk—I referred to my original artworks continually. I wanted the final two spreads, with Bear and Chook lying by the pond and watching the moon, to be similar enough to reassuringly echo the corresponding scenes in the first book, but not to replicate them exactly.

Here, it's nearly finished. I'm painting the flat, creamy-coloured background.

It took a long time to get to this stage, with all the artworks finished and spread out on the floor for Lisa and me to check. It finally looks like it's a book. I like this stage!

Lisa likes them—hooray! Time to pack them all up, and send them off to the publisher.

My books always begin with a soft pencil and a sketch book. Because I have lots of ideas popping into my head, I need to get them down really quickly. Because of this, some of my first sketches are pretty basic, but they are a great help in planning out the contents of the final illustrations.

Some of my very quick sketches make me laugh, when I look back at them. This was a pictorial note to myself. On the final page, I wanted Violet to look admiringly at her big sister, and try to copy her taking her bow. This is what my drawings look like when I play Pictionary. No one would want to put them in a book!

Sometimes my first quick sketch looks quite similar to the finished artwork…

the final drawing and design is just more polished.

To add colour and pattern to the characters' clothes, I used some of my two daughters' artwork from when they were at preschool. This is a collage by my younger daughter, using fabric, paper, tissue and metallic stickers. I scanned the collage and used it for one of Violet's dresses.

This wax crayon rubbing was perfect for Violet's other dress.

Sometimes, however, I needed to manipulate the colours in Photoshop before I could use them. My elder daughter printed this pattern with children's watercolour paints and a square eraser, when she was four years old.

After a change of hue, I used it to decorate Mum's shirt. The patterns on the pushchair and on the bags are also pre-school creations in wax crayon and marker pen, scanned and manipulated in Photoshop.

To create the sounds coming from Violet's mouth, I also used sections of my daughters' paintings from preschool.

The different marks had been made by printing with the edge of a piece of card, splattering paint onto the paper and by varying the way the paintbrush was held. These images were great for expressing Violet's changing moods… and her sister's.

I love the way children use unexpected materials for their artwork. I learned a lot from the creations I discovered in my daughters' preschool trays at the end of each day they spent there.

The final stage of the illustrative process was adding the last of the colour with acrylic paints.

The Shrieking Violet artworks are ready to be scanned. They're laid out on the rug on my floor, exactly where Bear and Chook lay seventeen months earlier.

I'm glad my drawing improved between these first quick sketches and the finished artwork for p1 of Rudie Nudie.

When I look at this page from my sketch book, I can see the history of the development of my ideas for the bath illustration. I tried a few positions for the little boy, and at first Mum was a bit too static, sitting on the right hand side of the bath. I decide to move her to the left and have her leaning in to splash the children. The various diagonal lines help add more movement to the picture.

Here is the finished double-page spread – the end product of all that thinking and scribbling.

I went from here...

to here.

From here...

to here (but it did take quite a few months).

In some of my sketches you can see I was trying to work out where to put everything. This girl ended up with four arms...

and this one was never given a head!

But – despite that – I quite like this drawing. Again, I can see some 'history' in it: my drawing process is quite visible. I can see evidence of my thoughts as I worked out where to draw the legs, to express movement and energy in the best way I could. I don't mind those extra little lines in there – they make the drawing seems more alive, somehow. I left a lot of lines like this in the finished illustrations for Rudie Nudie – I didn't rub them out.

A very kind lady crocheted this blanket for my elder daughter when she was a baby. I used this photo to decorate the bedclothes in the final illustrations for Rudie Nudie, when the children are tucked up in bed.

I rather like the contrast between the handmade qualities of something like our woollen blanket and the digital processes involved in using Photoshop.

This was an exciting day: the printers had sent the colour proofs for us to check. Here, Chren Byng and Tegan Morrison from ABC Children's Books are looking at all the pages. They look happy because they were – we all were. The colours were just right!

And here (several months later) are Tegan and me at the book launch in November 2011. We look even happier! Rudie Nudie is a book – printed, bound, jacketed… and in the shops!