My Brilliant Brother

I just want the world to know that I swim in the same gene pool as Matt Davis, who is an amazing jazz musician.  Here’s one of his concerts at the opening of the Christchurch Art Gallery.  He’s the disembodied saxophone up on the balcony, with all the stunning solos.  He thinks he sucks in this concert, and will probably kill me for posting this, but oh well.  I’m going to anyway, cos I’m a proud sister.

I can hold it in my hand…

Because it’s an actual book. With pages. And a cover. Wheeee! The advance copies of Mending Lucille and Shawn Sheep arrived on the same day. I can’t quite bring myself to look through them because I know I’ll just spot all the flaws, but it’s really nice to finally see the fruits of all those all-nighters.

Check out these artists wallets – illustration in your back pocket!

The real price of shoes

Radiohead and MTV have teamed up to raise awareness of human trafficking and exploitation.

The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

I’ve just started working on a great project for New Frontier – they have a new series of books called The Music Box, which I think is a fabulous idea. They take famous pieces of classical music and get well-known Australian authors to write stories inspired by the music. I think The Flight of The Bumblebee (written by Hazel Edwards and illustrated by Mini Goss) is already in production, and I’ll be illustrating The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy by Sue Whiting. Hopefully later in the year I’ll also be working on The Sorceror’s Apprentice. The books come with a CD of the music and the story narrated by Antonia Kidman

It’s going to be a lot of fun, because Sue’s text is very light-hearted and funny, and has kid appeal – and I get to draw candymakers, fairies and a greedy King! What more could I ask for, I ask you? I’m also thinking it’s be a good chance to experiment a bit with technique and getting my layouts and compositions a bit groovier and energy-packed. I’ll try and post some sketches as it all starts to take shape….

Hmmm…now I have to work out what a sugarplum looks like. Which reminds me – check out these incredible photos of traditional japanese sweets… amazing what you can find on flickr.com

Dawn of the Knitted Dead

Knit one, Purl 3, Devour Brains, Cast off.

Cakeyvoice and her yarn of doom have created a monster! or several. Visit her blog to see truly fabulous knitted versions of scenes from Dawn of the Dead, Hellboy, the White Stripes, Slash, Michael Myers and Sadako from the Ring.

Natashia Won!

Back when I was just starting out with illustrating, I worked with Natashia Saunders on her book I Stole Daddy’s Toes – mainly because the instant she first emailed me to see if I was interested I could tell that she was damn cool and liked her instantly. We had a great time getting the book off the ground together, but now she has definitely moved on to bigger and better things. She just won THE Golden Palm Screenplay Competition Award at the Beverley Hills Film Festival for her screenplay “The Spinning Wheel, which is about a Jewish prostitute’s friendship with a runaway slave.  Woo hoo! Big cheers and lots of jumping up and down and firing off champagne corks in a reckless and risky fashion for Natashia and her golden prospects!

Illustration Friday – Save

Here are another couple of spreads from Mending Lucille (Hachette, June 2008). The little girl in the story is saved by Chrissie, who becomes part of the family after the little girl’s mother disappears. Chrissie’s love helps her come to terms with what’s happened and banishes the bad dreams….

Interspecies Loving

We got a new puppy yesterday … little Scruffy, rescued from the pound by the good people at RADAR and passed on to us.. He’s very very cute and full of personality. The only thing bothered us was how he’d get on with our freerange rat….

Illustration Friday – Heavy

Well, this is the heaviest moment in Mending Lucille. It’s all uphill from here, you’ll be pleased to know.