seminars & websites

Illustrators Australia held seminars this past Saturday about contracts, copyright and pricing from and illustrator's perspective. It was a great day!

I learned a lot about PLR and ELR (Public Lending Rights and Education Lending Rights) which I hope get for the first time with the book I have just completed. Basically, PLR/ELR are payments made to australian authors/illustrators to compensate for books being available to view and photocopy for 'free' in libraries and schools, in theory diminishing sales of the book. You can read more about it here.

I was also finally able to meet the lovely Majory Gardner in person. Marjory and I worked on a similar series of books for Five Mile Press (Brimax) last year, and she also has a brand new sparkly website. Do go have a look - it really is beautiful and her bright work just pops from the page!

some other cool revamped illustrator websites to check out too:

<< flossy-p

sonia kretchmar >>

such lovely folio sites - they make me realise mine needs a serious update/revamp too!

amongst the gum trees....

I had to paint a lot of eucalypts for my aussie Christmas book, so one day I took a little walk down to the creek at the end of my street to shoot a few reference shots:

and here's a snippit of how some of mine turned out:

It's official.

It's officially done. 14 double page spreads, 6 single pages and one spot illustration for my latest children's book. Cover sketch 10c ended up winning (see earlier post), so it was approved on Tuesday, I finished everything on Thursday, couriered it all to Sydney on Friday, and had the biggest sleep-in ever on Saturday. :-)

I have to say I am proud of what I accomplished, and I can't wait to see it in book form!! I will miss the project in my life - Not so much the book itself but the time I dedicated to painting every day and how that has affected my discipline. I really learned a lot illustrating this book, which I will share with you over the coming weeks.

I am looking forward to getting back to a bit of normal life though -- some blogging, some Illustration Fridays, but most of all seeing my husband and friends! I have been locked inside my studio for the last month, and as much as I have loved every second of it, I am keen to rediscover my social life (and the house needs a good clean too!)

Flora's giveaway

If you don't know Flora's art, otherwise known as Happy Doodle Land, you MUST go check her out. Now is an espcially good time to do so because she is having a giveaway of one of my favouritest prints ever. go... now!

Cover pains

I'm drawing to the end of my current book project (pun intended!) -- except that we still don't have a cover! I've just submitted my 9th and 10th sketches for it.

I think a cover design is always fraught - it's so difficult to find one image which sums up the book, plus there are lots of people to keep happy: editor, author, marketing, publicity, etc. oh, and yeah yourself in there somewhere too. In my experience I've found I usually need to relinquish control of the cover, and just be happy with the rest of the book to myself. Hard to do though, I still have to put my two cents in even if it's ignored sometimes ;)

I'm reminded of when I heard David Weisner speak at the SCBWI conference, and he told how he went through about 20 cover ideas for Flotsam. He showed us many of them, and they weren't all good! It doesn't make me feel so bad, seeing as he won the Caldecott and all...