The illustrations for my children's books are, more often than not, drawn and painted on a heavy paper using acrylics. Its a fairly straight forward process, though I am always keen to try and keep developing, both in terms of the drawing and also in the execution of the final image. I sometimes implement small elements of print and stenciling to compliment the painting. My design work is assisted by my Mac and I'm also currently developing a purely digital way of working, which I suppose in time, will start to feed into my current painted work. But for now I'm happy sloshing my paints around!

The drawings above are taken from my sketchbook, they show how an idea is developed into a finished 'rough', which I can then present to the client. This involves playing around with many development scribbles, most of which never see the light of day, from compositional 'thumbs' (top middle), onto more detailed studies, such as the characters (left and bottom). The finished rough is then sent to the client for approval. Here I needed to make slight alterations to the figures in the foreground. It was important to show the boy maneuvering himself in his wheelchair and also the girl needed to be repositioned to make her appear more as if she were stepping into the picture.

The next stage, once the rough has been approved, is to create the final image. Here are some photographs of the image in development, from the the first colour washes I slowly start to build up the strength of the image in terms of colour, definition and contrast. In an image like this, I try to decide where the main light sources will be and then 'map' out how the light will fall on all the objects throughout the composition. I can then decide on where the highlights and shadows should go. In addition to this, I try to decide what the overall colour scheme should be in these early stages, making sure everything sits happily with everything else on the page.

The final stages involve adding in the details and tidying up the image. When creating an image for print it is important to leave 'bleed' around the perimeter of the image, this gives the client an easier time in production when the image needs to be cropped to the edge of the page.

Here is another example of an image in development. This example shows how my illustration of 'Hook' for 'Peter Pan' was created. Once the character has been developed to a satisfactory state, via lots of pushing and pulling of his facial features. I draw up a finished rough which, when approved by the client, I can refer to during the process of painting the image.

In this illustration I was concentrating on creating an exciting atmosphere using strong lighting and glowing elements, I also use this as a way of directing the focus of an image. Here the emphasis is on the bottle of poison in Hook's hand. This also lights Hook's face from underneath, giving him a more sinister feel. Again, I deveopled the image in layers of strength and definition. I wanted the colour in this piece to be reflective of Hook himself, angry, dangerous and fiery.