About
Growing up in Scotland around creative parents and grandparents, has allowed me to explore various arts. Raising my children in the north of England, I then decided, while they attended school, to study various traditional art courses then gain a BA in animation/illustration. This lead me to study an MA in children’s book illustration allowing me to delve deeper into creating pictures for storytelling. My love for nature, the great outdoors and the textures of traditional art will always play a part in my work whether continuing to create personal commissions or making pictures for books to encourage readers to think about the narrative and situations that happen in daily life. However, learning to draw, choose colours and textures digitally has been a key development to my creativity and one I will continue to explore due to the accessibility and professional business opportunities in the art world today.
Project overview
If This Rock Could Talk
If This Rock Could Talk This project started by investigating whether children could be taught about adult topics, specifically menopause. I needed to learn the aspects of children’s books as a whole; the production side, the narrative, page turns, pacing, formats. Through a research informed development process, I decided on a picture book to encourage empathy, through learning emotional intelligence, as apposed to teaching the emotional impact of hormones alone. Having decided while walking in Cumbria on an inanimate object for the main character, a narrative developed for “If This Rock Could Talk”. Starting with thumbnails, then a dummy book in digital line, allowed my practice to develop through reading about the work process of other illustrators especially with traditional pencil work, collage and textures. My experiments created a mix of finished images for a trial portfolio. Finally, a review with Hachette and careful consideration to trial the modern techniques, allowed me to begin a digital version of the picture book displayed here.
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