Sketching.

Today I am sketching a rough for the December/ January issue of Melbourne's Child (Sydney's Child, etc.). This is a section of it, above.  Because I am not sure whether it is OK to show the rest of the sketch before the illustration is published*, I have dug out some sketches from this year for things that didn't eventuate, for one reason or another.

Above: a sketch for Sophie, a character that was in development for the uTales children's story Eva the Diva and Sophie Too by author Jackie Kramer.  I was chuffed that the author chose to work with me, but I decided to abandon the project as I did not feel that it was the right time to tackle an entire book, both in terms of my illustration skills and my time constraints due to other projects.

Sketches for the cover of Haley Tanner's Vaclav and Lena.  I was floored when I received an e-mail from Random House New York with a book cover mock-up featuring a pair of my wooden men!  I was asked to illustrate child-like versions of them, as well as a few motifs representing Coney Island and magic tricks.  This time it was the publisher who decided not to go ahead, although I was paid handsomely for these sketches.

...It is still a big dream of mine to illustrate a book cover.

* This might be an unnecessary paranoia left over from my fashion industry days when of course one would never show work in progress in case someone copied it.  Perhaps it's not relevant to publishing?