illustration related stuff to learn from and be inspire by

I've stumbled accross some illustration related things online over the last few months that I thought were worth sharing...

As anyone who reads this blog can attest to, I am a huge fan of the work of Mr. Oliver Jeffers and I came across 2 really great interviews with him. The first is from The Great Discontent (read it here) and the second is from We Love This Book (read it here).

An other artist whose work I really admire is Jon Klassen and he recently did a pod cast interview on Your Dreams My Nightmares with Sam Webber. You can listen to that interview here.

For those of you on twitter, I highly recommend that you follow an art director named Giuseppe Castellano (@pinocastellano). He works in children's publishing and is constantly tweeting art tips for illustrators. Although his tips are especially helpful to picture book artists, I think they also apply to illustrators in general. Here's an interview he did.

Here are two article that Mr. Castellano tweeted about that I thought had some pretty good information. Here's one about composition, and here's one about the history of children's picture books.

And for all the process junkies out there (like myself), this is how Adam Rex makes a picture book, and this is how Greg Pizzoli does it.

this moose belongs to me

As I'm sure you know, I love picture books and I have quite a nice collection going. It's not a huge collection yet, but it's carefully curated. I only add books with art that excites and inspires me. I have shared books from my collection in this space in the past, but I'm hoping to do more of it in the comings months. The following book was a recent Christmas gift that I am happy to add to my collection.

This Moose Belongs to Me was written and illustrated by one of my favorite picture book makers, Oliver Jeffers. All of his books are brilliant, but The Incredible Book Eating Boy remains my absolute favorite. I wrote about it here. This Moose Belongs To Me is now my second favorite of his books :)

The story is adorable and the images are a perfect compliment to the text.  In terms of content, the illustrations have lots of little clues and details that add to the story. I notice something new every time I read it. In terms of style, I love the combination of the fully rendered backgrounds and the more playfully drawn characters in the foregrounds.

What I really admire about the work of Oliver Jeffers is his ability to tell simple but clever stories in a simple but clever way. And his illustrations are so loose and free. Because I struggle with that in my own work, I really appreciate it in the work of artists who make it look easy.

portrait of oliver jeffers

©2010 Jacqueline Hudon-Verrelli

I was so inspired by this video that I had to do a portrait of Mr. Jeffers, one of my favorite illustrators, based on it.

oliver jeffers interview

I just read the most wonderful interview with Oliver Jeffers (whose children's book I mentioned here) over at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Be sure to watch the video at the end where Oliver shows some of his process and his studio.

Doesn't he have a fabulous mustache?

european picture books - the incredible book eating boy

In addition to loving the illustrations in this book, The Incredible Book Eating Boy, I also love the story. It's written and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers, originally from Northern Ireland but he now lives in New York. He's one of my favorites. The illustrations are quite loosely painted and I love the use of collage, texture and hand drawn type. All the images are painted on actual book covers and pages which I think is a nice touch. I also enjoy the cut out in the shape of bite marks on the back cover of the paper back, which is the version that I picked up. If you like what you see, you should check out the images of this book on Oliver Jeffers' site.