A Night With Our Stars

On the 10th March I attended my first A Night With Our Stars (ANWOS) run by the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA). ANWOS is an annual event held at Westbooks in Victoria Park. I was invited to be one of 21 speakers (authors and / or illustrators) who had a book published in 2010. I spoke for 3 minutes on the first book I illustrated My Arms Your Legs, written by Kim Rackham. I was a little nervous at first being in front of 200 teachers, librarians, authors and illustrators but once I looked out to the crowd I saw a bunch of friendly familiar faces smiling and listening attentively. It was an honour to be asked to speak along with many other professional inspiring people including Frané Lessac, Mark Greenwood, Sally Murphy, Sally Morgan, Meg McKinlay, AJ Betts to name a few! I look forward to attending next year's event.

While on the subject of CBCA here is the flyer they recently commissioned me to illustrate and design for their upcoming Bookwiz on the 3rd July. It is a book based quiz in the style of the tv show Spicks and Specks. It was a fun job to work on :)

Choose Active Transport Book Launch

In July 2010 I was asked to illustrate, design and typeset two books for Physical Activity Taskforce. One was a picture book Matilda's Morning Adventures and the other a teacher's resource book Choose Active Transport, the books will be used to encourage children to catch buses, walk or ride to school rather than traveling by car every day. I worked days, nights and weekends on these books for a solid 5 months! It was hard work but an honour to be selected to illustrate the books and work with some great people. I am happy with how they turned out.

I attended the launch on the 9th March at Department of Sport and Recreation, WA. Here you can see me with the flowery top on next to the author Kim Chute.
At least one copy was distributed in every WA primary school following the launch.

Resolutions-Illustration Friday topic

Happy new year folks! hope it's off to a good start :) It has been several months since I have posted an Illustration Friday topic but what better time than at the start of a new year, plus it's a public holiday here today! I pondered for quite some time, brainstormed and also looked at a few people's illustrations for this topic. I liked how some people illustrated just one of their resolutions.

I do like to reflect on the previous year and plan how I can change in small steps and better myself, decide my focus for the new year. I know a lot of people don't like setting them e.g. my husband as they think they are a waste of time. I like to write a list of things I want to try and achieve in the new year. I don't always achieve all of them but I was suprised when changing diaries the other day that most of them I was able to cross off. The ones i didn't cross off I realised weren't that important and they won't be on my list this year!

As I was reflecting I felt somewhat frustrated though that after December we don't have a Blankember month in between the previous year and the start of the next one as we don't really get time to stop and contemplate before BAM the new year has started already!
I guess this piece is about having creativity and lots of ideas, skills and goals but not always knowing what is most important to start on first!

One of my creative goals this year was to write a list of things I personally want to illustrate / paint this year. I feel that this will keep me inspired as an artist. I often put clients and other's work before my own and don't really allow much time to work on personal projects that I enjoy.