18 Aug 2013 1 Comment
in 1 My books, 2 Work in progress, All my drawings Tags: Illustration, urban fantasy
I had another go at drawing Brakman, a character from the book I’m writing at the moment. To make sense of his name, you need to know that “brak” is a derogatory term for a mixed-breed dog. I tried to draw a more doggy aspect of him first, and mix in some more human features – like the nose and eyes. Came out looking remarkably like a rat 🙂
Brakman also looks a lot more competent and confident as a rat-dog than as a man.
23 Feb 2013 Leave a comment
in 1 My books, 2 Work in progress, All my drawings Tags: Illustration, The Broken Path
More work in progress illustrations for The Broken Path:
This time, a character called “Porcupine”. She’s standing in front of the fountain in Company Gardens, late at night.
The first few lines:
Then the rest is painted in using only black and white:
The drawing is nearly done:
I will not share your information with anyone. You won’t receive many mails from me – I only send a notification when a new book is launched, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like
15 Feb 2013 1 Comment
in 1 My books, 2 Work in progress, All my drawings Tags: Illustration, The Broken Path
Another work-in-progress for my book. This time, depicting a scene where a witch visits the Museum of Natural History after hours. This is not a finished drawing. Not happy with it yet, but it’s getting there 🙂
09 Feb 2013 4 Comments
in 1 My books, All my drawings Tags: Illustration, The Broken Path
Work in progress: the first of the “plates”, or full page illustrations of significant moments in my book. Here Rebecca tells her sister Pippa a bed time story, like the ones she used to tell when Pippa was a little girl.
I do these drawings by hand on paper first, then scan them in and paint the rest in Photoshop. I like working in black and then erasing the excess away to create a sort of lino-cut feel.
I will not share your information with anyone. You won’t receive many mails from me – I only send a notification when a new book is launched, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like
08 Feb 2013 1 Comment
in 1 My books, All my drawings Tags: Illustration, The Broken Path
Working on the little drawings that will go at the end of each chapter. Something like this, maybe:
Here is another one:
07 Feb 2013 Leave a comment
in 1 My books, All my drawings Tags: fantasy, Illustration, The Broken Path
Yesterday I started (at last) the illustrations for my book The Broken Path. Just rough pencil sketches so far. This is a scene where Rebecca tells a story to her sister Pippa:
And a whole lot of crabs:
I will not share your information with anyone. You won’t receive many mails from me – I only send a notification when a new book is launched, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like
23 Feb 2012 Leave a comment
in 2 Work in progress, All my drawings, stories Tags: e-book, Illustration, urban fantasy
This might be it: the cover for my new book The Story Trap. Is it finished? Not sure. I’ve been working on it all day and can no longer see it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll look at it and start changing things again…
The big change from previous version is the pattern in the mirror, the roses are completely redone and no longer pink, and I’ve inserted more shadows.
The Story Trap will be available as a print – as well as e-book. If you would like a notification when it gets launched, please leave me your name and e-mail address in the form below. Would love to hear from you!
To be notified when I release a new book please sign up using this form.
I will not share your information with anyone. You won’t receive many mails from me – I only send a notification when a new book is launched, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like.
12 Feb 2012 1 Comment
in 2 Work in progress, All my drawings, stories Tags: Illustration
I trimmed Pippa’s hair.
She used to look like this:
In the story, this is the moment when she’s just climbed over a gate into somebody’s backyard and is about to try and break into their house. She’s wondering why they have no burglar bars…
07 Feb 2012 2 Comments
in 2 Work in progress, All my drawings, stories Tags: Illustration
This is a bit of an experiment – not sure if it works. Another image from the book I’ve almost finished writing.
07 Feb 2012 Leave a comment
in 2 Work in progress, All my drawings, stories Tags: Illustration
Some more drawings for my book. The chain was quite tricky – had to redraw it many times.
12 Dec 2011 3 Comments
in 2 Work in progress, All my drawings, Inspiration Tags: 2 Work in progress, Illustration
Possible illustration for my new book – work in progress:
17 Jul 2009 15 Comments
in books Tags: children's books, Illustration
Many of the books I share here are books that I grew up with. There is something special about books from your childhood. Varenka by Bernadette was one of my favourites.
I tried to find out more about Bernadette – I have several of her books – but her surname is not mentioned anywhere. Edit: Bernadette is, of course, Bernadette Watts I used to have a link to her site, but the site appears to have gone down. Varenka is not a re-telling of a Russian folk tale as I previously stated, but written by Bernadette herself. Each picture fills the entire page, so I was forced to reproduce mostly cropped details here. Which really does not convey the beauty of the book.
Varenka was a widow who lives in a little wooden house deep in the great forest. “Inside was everything Varenka needed, a table, chairs, a cupboard with a shelf for crockery, and picture on the wall.” More
30 Apr 2009 1 Comment
in All my drawings, Illustration Tags: drawing, Illustration
In my last post, I showed some of my drawings that were inspired by stories. Now I’m back again to pictures that seem to have been inspired by stories, but the stories are missing and never really existed.
Here are some more pages from my sketchbook. More
15 Apr 2009 4 Comments
in Art, Illustration Tags: books, clarissa leahy, cornelia funke, Illustration, james c christiansen, madalina iordache-levey, margaret mahy
Do you remember the time before you could read, paging through books and looking at the pictures? And once you could read, not really believing that what was written down was the full story? Some pictures are so evocative and mysterious I never felt convinced that I now knew all their secrets.
I’ve been gathering such images and here are some of my favourites. Firstly there is the photographic artist Madalina Iordache-Levey. This image is called “The Mysterious Disappearance of Miss Peregrinne Ploot: More
27 Jul 2008 2 Comments
in Animation, Art, books, Colour, Illustration, Myself Tags: children's books, Illustration
Some books touch your heart. ” An Ocean World” by Peter Sis is one of these. It tells a simple and powerful story about a whale’s search for friendship and love. Apart from the writing on the postcard on the first page, the entire story is told through the images- the evocative watercolour marks and the muted colours. We meet the whale for the first time in baby picture that has been turned into a postcard:
On the back of this card we can read a message from Peter Sis to his children: More
Masha du Toit 
Recent Comments