Brave Enough To Fly
Back in 2016 a friend of mine asked if I would illustrate a children’s book for her. She had written this very sweet and inspiring story of a little girl on the verge of moving to a new town and facing the fear of change. In the book the little girl meets a helpful butterfly by the name of Ena who empathizes with her hesitation when it comes to new things. Ena, tells us how she over came this fear with the help of others and the courage to try new things. Eventually Ena works up the courage to be brave enough to fly.
This was my very first book illustration project. And boy was it a lot of work, from storyboarding to hand drawing and hand painting all the images; But I truly loved creating the characters and giving life to this story.
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You have to start somewhere, so here are my very first sketches of Ena the butterfly.
With the sketches approved it was time to splash some color around.
I spent the 12 months creating this book in several different locations starting out in a friends double wide, moving to my parents spare room and finally completing the whole thing in my own house. Artist on the move.
Christopher Bunny
This is a project that is still a work in progress, and marks my second venture into the world of childrens’ book illustrations. My Aunt has had this story written 20 or so years and likes to say she was just waiting for me to grow into the artist she new I’d be to illustrate it. This story is about a little boy, Christopher who has just welcomed a new baby brother into his family. Unused to sharing the spotlight up to this point he has been looking for ways to keep his fathers attention focus on him. The story follows Christopher as he decided he would rather be a string of different animals instead of his boring human self, however each animal seems to run into some problem that prevents him from doing some of his favorite things causing him to change into a new fuzzy form.
I currently have the characters designed and will be working on the layout of the book and the images later this year. Keep looking back for more updates.
