update

My husband and I bought a house last month and are currently up to our ears in boxes. We'll be moving out of our uptown apartment at the end of this month, staying with friends for a couple weeks and then moving into our new home in mid July.

I'm currently packing up my studio. I can't wait to re-open everything next month in my new studio space. Tonight my hubby and I took a short break from packing to enjoy a 'Fat Elvis' milk shake from Boogie's Burgers. Peanut butter, banana and bacon. Mmmmm...

the butterflies get launched

Here's a peek at one last spread from the book:

MY BOOKS ARRIVED!!!!!!

I just got back from the post office with my copies of the picture book I illustrated. They smell great; they look great.  I'm one happy girl :)

(the letters in the second photo are backwards because I took it with my computer)

final art & layout for the 'caterpillar' spread

I had done a post about the process for this one here.

available for pre-order!

I've had many people ask me where they will be able to pick up a copy of my soon-to-be-released picture book, Bye, Bye, Butterflies! and I finally have an answer. So far it is available online for pre-order from Amazon and Chapters/Indigo. I'm hoping bookstores will also stock it on their shelves, especially local ones, but I'm told that most bookstores who don't stock it should still be able to order it in on request.

another spread from the book

(click on the image to see it larger)

You can see some of the process for this spread here.

first look at final art for Bye,Bye, Butterflies!

I've had permission from the publisher to post some of the final art from the picture book that I recently illustrated (Bye, Bye, Butterflies!) for over a week but just couldn't find the time to get it done.  My world has been filled with chaos lately.  In addition to some freelance work, over the past month my husband and I have been dealing with several issues with our apartment (including but not limited to an attempted break in) and we've also been searching for a home to buy - which is pretty time consuming and stressful in itself.  The apartment issues seem to be getting resolved and the new home search may have come to an end so I feel like I can finally take a moment to get caught up.

I just added an icon of the book cover to the right and as far as I'm aware the book is still on track to be released in June. I can't wait!

So, without any further delay, here is the opening illustration for the book:
(click on the image to see it larger)

Stay tuned, as I'll be sharing more images in the coming days :)

the cover for Bye, Bye, Butterflies!

I just received an e-mail containing the final cover of my soon-to-be-released picture book, Bye, Bye, Butterflies! and I thought it would be a good time to share the process behind that cover.


I felt that the cover needed to show the main character, Charlie, interacting with butterflies and I had some initial ideas of how that that could go.

My editor liked the idea of the butterfly on Charlie's hand because it also looked like Charlie was waving.

Because I had some ideas about how I wanted to do the background, I painted Charlie and the butterfly separately so that I could experiment without overworking my painting and then combine the 2 layers (foreground and background) digitally.

My initial vision involved a chaotic cloud of butterflies.  I thought it would look really good to have the title of the book in white type on top of the chaos.

However, once the image was painted, I realized that my idea wasn't working so I simplified the background.  I really enjoyed all the experimentation with butterflies and patterns that I did at this stage.

It still wasn't working so I simplified it some more.

And then some more.

At this stage my first thought was that we could have the title of the book arc across the top.  However, it still wasn't looking right.  My editor suggested that I try adding a banner that the title could sit on and I loved that idea.  Here were a couple mock ups:

We agreed on the second version, so I painted the banner and then added red stripes to Charlie's shirt to bring more color into the image.

I sent just the artwork to my publisher and this is one of the earlier mock ups that the designer came up with:

At this time, my original paintings were being properly scanned and color corrected.  When I got the scans back I made a few small changes and this is what the final cover art looked like:

And this is what the final front and back cover design looks like:

'cloud nine' in uppercase magazine

You can find one of my illustrations in issue 13 of Uppercase Magazine.

what I've been up to...

Last week I finished doing the final touches to my illustrations for the picture book Bye, Bye, Butterflies! Now the art is completely finished and I'm eagerly waiting for June, when the book is expected to be released :)

I was also part of a roundtable discussion about picture book illustration last week at the Alberta College of Art and Design. It was a really great experience - lots of good questions and interesting conversations about picture books. I enjoyed getting out and talking about something I'm so passionate about. It was especially validating for me to be included among illustrators I really admire, such as Renata Liwska, Carolyn Fisher and Dave Whamond. Dave even used to be one of my instructors back in my college days. Thank you so much to Mike Kerr and Tivadar Bote for inviting me.

I also have some fun new illustration projects on the go. I'm working on some gift card packaging as well as an illustration for a children's magazine. More on those later.