Illustrations - Weekend Uniform

I'm getting really into gouache paint at the moment. I think it's really great for small illustrations, so I wanted to do more of those.

I started with a fun little self portrait of me in, what I like to call, my weekend unform; an oversized t-shirt and a pair of leggings. If I don't plan on leaving the house, this is probably what I'll be wearing.

I then thought it would be nice to document my over sized t-shirt collection. I think it all started with the Sunnydale High shirt which I got at a sci-fi convention when I was 15. They didn't have one small enough but I really wanted it so I just went with the bigger one.

Most of the other ones were gifts. One of my sisters gave me the CSI: Stotfold one which was custom made from Ebay (it's my hometown), my other sister gave me the 'I'm kind of a big deal on my blog' shirt, and my parents gave me the Eminem t-shirt after I pointed it out in the men's section of Peacocks. 

The Toot Fairy Book

 A little before Christmas my boyfriend Andrew decided he wanted to write a children's book (inspired by my previous literary endeavours I'm sure!) and I agreed to do the illustrations.
He played around with a few different ideas but knew he'd struck gold when he suddenly came out with, "How about 'the toot fairy'?"

 With the help of a couple of friends he wrote the book and then it was my turn to do the hard work and get the illustrations done.

With my previous two books I did all the artwork by hand. I drew the images and then coloured them using water colour paints. But for this book we knew we wanted a bolder, brighter look so I coloured the images on photoshop.

 

 I put the pages together in photoshop, adding the lines of text.

Then we sent it off to be printed! We're self-publishing the book using Create Space and it's available to buy on Amazon.

 So if you have a little kid in your life, or even a big kid, that likes fart jokes check it out!

And have a look at my previous books If I Lived There and Louisiana Ludgate and the Lollipops

Book for Sale!

Remember when I made a book? Well it's now for sale!

I've self-published the book with Create Space which is an American company I found via Youtube.

I ordered 25 copies to start with and they arrived yesterday. I've already had a few orders!

Including some requests for signed copies!

Create Space gives you free Amazon listings so my book can be purchased from there.

Check it out!

I made a book!

That's right: I wrote and illustrated a children's book and turned it into an actual thing I can hold!

At the moment I just have one copy, but I'm looking in to ways to get it mass printed.

As a teaching assistant I read a lot of children's books and I always pay attention to the illustrations. At some point I started thinking 'I could do that,' and the Easter holidays were the perfect time to try.

I started with a rough idea of the story and started sketching idea's for the pictures.

The illustrations were painted with water colours and I used colour pencils to add more definition on the images.

I scanned all the original paintings and opened them in Photoshop to resize them and edit them a little bit. Then I added the text. I kept the story pretty simple because my focus was the illustrations and, as anyone who knew me while I was doing my dissertation at uni can tell you; I am not a writer.

I searched online for the best option for printing my book and settled on Cewe photoworld because they were offering £15 for new customers. Printing it as a photobook was fine for one copy, but when I come to print more I will look elsewhere as it'll be too expensive.

The printed copy turned out great and I've already read it to my class at work. They seemed to like it.

And here's the blurb for anyone interested in what the books about!