two great interviews

I wanted to share these 2 illustrator interviews that I recently read and enjoyed.

The first one was with Carson Ellis on the blog, Picturebook Makers. Her first picture book that she's both written and illustrated, Home, is coming out this month. The entire post was really inspiring, but I especially found myself relating to what she said about "contributing something worthwhile to an already massive heap of brilliant books." As someone who aspires to one day write my own books, I think about that a lot.

The other interview was with Chris Silas Neal on Inky Goodness. Again, I really enjoyed the entire post, but it's what he said about his upcoming picture book, Everyone, that really inspired me:

"Everyone is a book about a boy and his feelings. Through visual metaphors I describe how expressing our feelings affects our surroundings and how the world reflects those feelings back at us. When you are sad, it may feel like you’re the only one who has ever been sad, but we learn that you are not alone. The world feels it too. So when you are happy, it makes the world happy."

What a great and unique idea! I can't wait to read it and see how he turned a concept like that into a book for children.

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.

some video inspiration

I've come across quite a few interesting and inspiring videos lately that I wanted to share.

• The first one is a video by Mike Kerr about the sketchbooks of children's book illustrator Renata Liwska:


A Quiet Look - How to become a children's book illustrator in one (not so easy) step from mike kerr on Vimeo.



• Next is a TED talk by children's book writer and illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka:




• And finally, the latest Oliver Jeffers video about how he makes picture books:


Oliver Jeffers Author Film 2013 from Oliver Jeffers on Vimeo.


Also, a few months back I read a really great article via Renata Liwska's blog.  It was about how to work with an illustrator and was written by Deborah Underwood, a writer Renata has worked with on several picture books.  You can read it here.

book by its cover

For anyone who's not familiar with it, Book-By-Its-Cover is a really great blog that reviews art books. Every Friday they feature a peak into artist's sketchbooks and today's artist is my friend, Karen Klassen. I love her sketchbooks. They're really inspiring; full of experimentation. Check them out here.

Colour inspiration

This is where the inspiration for the colours in my painting came from: