I want to see this documentary on children's book authors and illustrators! The filmmakers also have an interesting blog with snippets of interviews and articles with impressive kidlit folk including Lemony Snicket, RL Stine, and Arthur A. Levine. Worth checking out and bookmarking.

Thanks to Marisa Haedike for forwarding this link via Twitter. I love illustrator and designer Sandra Boynton's unmistakable style and humour, so it was great to see this behind-the-scenes interview with her. What a success story! Absolutely inspiring. And funny. Hope you enjoy it.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Happy Mother's Day to all those mothers (and mothers-to-be!) out there. On special day's like this I feel very far from home, and wish I could be back in Australia with my family, having bbq salmon on my brother's deck with a flock of king parrots in the tree above. But my thoughts are there, and with all of you today! I hope you take some time out to be good to yourself, and have a lovely one!

IMAGES:

"Sophie and Scarlett were helping to bake a cake..."
from Sophie Bakes a Cake
by Tina Burke

"One night Ruby had some news..."
from Ruby Makes a Friend
by Tina Burke

"POP"
Directed and animated
by Bernard Derriman

After multiple viewings and laughs, I wanted to share this animated short with you this morning. It was created by Bernard Derriman, an incredibly talented artist/animator who also happened to be my mentor when I was training in animation at the Walt Disney Studio — did I ever mention how fortunate I was to have the opportunity to work with talented people like this??! He now has his own animation production house, Squetch, and pretty much everything he produces makes me laugh out loud. This piece is no exception. It's a competition entry for the Annecy International Animated Film Festival — one of the biggest animation festivals in the world, held annually in France.

The fantastic champagne effects were done by Adam Phillips, also a friend and and ex-Disneyite, who has also made a success of himself with his own animation and related projects. Both guys have each created quite the fan base and have established themselves as experts after learning and combining paperless/computer animation techniques with their solid background in traditional drawing, animation and special fx.

If it gives you a laugh too, you can vote for it here. Click on the "Vote" tab, and vote for "Pop"!

From
The Arrival
by Shaun Tan

I now have a freshly cleaned drawing board (*happy sigh* . . . a clean workspace feels so full of potential), after sending off final artwork for Rosie and Ned and the Creepy Cave, the third in a series by award-winning author Meredith Costain, to be published by Puffin in July this year. (I also blogged about this project here.)

This adventure allowed me to draw a spooky old cottage with a witchy inhabitant, a creepy cave and satisfyingly suspenseful situations — all those kinds of things I LOVED in books (and tv :) when I was young. It's so fun to get to illustrate the type of book I loved to read.

Here's a teeny sneak peek . . .

images © 2010 Tina Burke
from "Rosie and Ned and the Creepy Cave" written by Meredith Costain
Published by Penguin Books 2010

Another little sketch done as I watched the Olympics. Now it's all over I'll have to find another show that has a lot of breaks or boring bits.

I've been enjoying my time on the couch with my sketchbook. It's not something I often do — just doodle and see what comes out the end of the pencil. Usually I have a specific project I'm working on, which guides me with characters and subject matter, mood and action. But doodling is a great exercise, it gets the brain ticking and takes me back to where it all started — drawing for no particular reason, just simply for the fun of it.

This sketch started with a pose; a girl, with her weight shifted to one hip, a hand resting on her tilted waist. And of course no-one wants to sing "I'm a little teapot" on their own, so the situation called for a little sister, her weight balanced equally on both feet as she eagerly attempts to imitate the actions. To me, her straight-up-and-down stance feels more enthusiastic and energised, while the shifted pose of the older girl feels more relaxed — perhaps she's done this little song and dance routine a hundred times already.

If you're a fan of picture books, or write and/or illustrate them yourself, you're sure to know of Oliver Jeffers' work. I enjoyed watching this behind-the-scenes video, so thought I'd share it here for other fans of his work.

A quote from Jeffers, on his working methods:

"I almost can't separate them in my brain:
the pictures define the words and
the words define the pictures."

I liked this description: that's how I feel when I'm writing my books — the images and words usually appear as one, and both are equally as important at getting the story and emotion across.

And on his illustration technique:

"I mix all different types of media together;
an old book cover . . . white pen . . . different types of paper with coloured pencil . . . acrylic paint . . .
really whatever material the illustration calls for at that point."

I love that. It sounds (and looks) so fun and creative — like play. Like when you're a kid with a craft box and you get so inventive with all kinds of mismatched materials to come up with a creative solution (I always wanted to make a real, live working robot. He would walk around on his toilet roll legs, and do my chores with his crunchy aluminium-foil hands).

Hearing and watching how Jeffers works inspires me to be creative, to push myself, to experiment — an artist doesn't have to be a purist, and use only watercolour or oils or pencil or digital. I'm not a purist at heart when it comes to mediums, but sometimes it's easy to forget to look outside the box, and play.

On that note, I'm off to make a robot.

I saw this video of Brian Selznick discussing The Invention of Hugo Cabret on School Library Journal.

I'm not necessarily saying this as a recommendation, just that it works for me. It's clean, the pages turn easily, and you still get the physical feel of holding and reading the book, and turning pages at the breaks. I also particularly like the ease that you can make adjustments to the dummy, by simply sending new A4 printouts with edited text or adjusted sketches as required — the editor can just slip the new page in and have an updated dummy! Too easy!

I love seeing kids in this pose. It always looks a little awkward and claustrophobic, but instantly says "best friends".

I find kids incredibly cute in their winter gear — all those coats and hats and hoods and mittens. I can almost hear the nylon swish as this little one trundles along.

Inspired while watching the pairs skating at the winter olympics last night. I like to think that this is how they all began.

"...the perfect book to read to a sibling who has bravely waved
goodbye to their older brother or sister for the day..."

That made me happy. But some news that will make you happy — they're also offering their readers 20% off everything (including Ruby!) in their lovely online store until March 31st. Check 'em out!

Ruby's big brother leaves for his first day of school


Ruby starts school — and introduces Milo, her imaginary friend, to the class.


Images from Ruby Makes a Friend
by Tina Burke
Published by Penguin Books

Best of luck to all the little munchkins on their new adventure! And to the parents! And the teachers! x

This little guy spotted us during our walk in the park, and came bounding over,

and stared at us expectantly.

You can imagine how embarrassed we were to tell him we weren't actually trying to get his attention, we were just taking a photo.

It reminded me of a little squirrel I used to feed peanuts to, when we were living on Toronto Island a couple of years ago. I scattered nuts around on the side deck and up along the handrail, then sat and watched him and his friend, "Skinny", come to collect them. Sometimes they'd peel and eat a few right there, sometimes they would carry them away and bury them in the snow for later. This usually involved putting one whole, unopened nut in their mouth, then stuffing another in next to it, at which point the first one would pop out. They'd pick it up and stuff that one back in again, and the second one would pop back out. This is how humans are smarter. We have backpacks.

I was entranced by this little comedy show, but also in the way the little squirrel looked like he was smiling when I got a look at his profile. His little mouth curved upward, and with his little chubby cheek and bright eye - well, he looked just like a little cartoon character.

Truly, it was like this:

So happy!

I always assumed that this was what squirrels looked like all the time, but after seeing others in the park, and now looking at photos on the internet (yes, I did my research on this), they actually don't all look like they're smiling. I think I just had one happy squirrel visitor, or at least one that really liked peanuts. I wonder if he's still there, and if he's still happy?

Tiny Tina meets Santa
(A very special occasion that required a very fancy dress)

It was my memories of all that excitement and anticipation that inspired me to create It's Christmas.  I started - just for fun - sketching a series of individual "moments", initially having no intention for the illustrations to be part of a book - I actually thought I'd use them for a series of Christmas cards.  However, as I sketched, I found the individual vignettes seemed to tie together so naturally that I was inspired to write It's Christmas, showing a series of snapshots of different children as they prepare for the big day . . . 

. . . and their mounting anticipation as they await the arrival of that V.I.P . . .

It's so fun to now see It's Christmas being read to kids, knowing they're probably squirming with excitement as I once did, and I'm absolutely thrilled if I can play even a small part in that magical time of year!

HAPPY COLOURING!! 



[image based on an illustration from It's Christmas ©Tina Burke].

It's Christmas is listed on the US Children's Book Council's reading list for seasonal holidays!  

I also finally got to see the SCBWI Hope Card - a gesture organised by Susanne and Jan Latta for the victims of the devastating 2008 Victorian bushfires.  It's a compilation of illustrations and writing from SCBWI members from around the globe, all with a message of hope and love for the children.  I was honoured to have my illustration chosen as the cover. 

Click here to download your free It's Christmas colouring sheet!


[image based on an illustration from It's Christmas ©Tina Burke.
If you wish to share the gift, please credit me, and/or link back to this site. I'd love to hear how you share it! Much appreciated, Tina]

↓ These are some my original character sketches I made when first designing Rosie and Ned for the first book - Rosie to the Rescue. I love the characters in this series, and really enjoyed working on these books and in the b/w technique, so I was thrilled to hear that Meredith had written a third in the series! Yay!

I'm about to start on the final cover art for 'Book 3', then we move on to the internal illustrations. The cover is generally the first stage of final artwork to be done, so it can be used for any marketing purposes by the publisher.

These are 'chapter books', aimed at young readers. Chapter books are typically text/story driven, with lots of black and white internal illustrations throughout, so the front and back covers are the only colour work involved. This allows me to have a bit of fun with it, though as this is a series there obviously needs to be consistency in the style from book to book.

Normally I do my children's book illustrations in watercolour, which allows me to leave a strong emphasis on the drawn line; watercolour is soft and transparent so I can have a lot of fun getting the drawing precisely how I want it, then add the colour without blotting out the facial expression or any subtle linework I want to keep. In my own picture books, I use text very sparingly and tell a lot of the story through the characters facial expressions and poses, so it's important I'm able to get the message across clearly through my drawing.

For the covers of these chapter books, however, I decided to go with acrylic as I wanted really strong, bright and bold colours for a dynamic cover - plus, in a nutshell, I love working in acrylic so was happy to have an excuse to use it!

... to my shiny new site!

I've given it a much-needed spring clean, and am excited to be adding this blog to use as a diary of what's going on in my world, and to answer some FAQ's.

I was inspired to do a complete overhaul after recently creating a website for my "other" art, and my first blog - something that I have been intending to do for a long time. I decided to link the two together, to make a more comprehensive and cohesive online home.

I hope you enjoy them!