Personal Favourites

I own a lot of picture books. Books with great stories, books with great illustrations, books with gatefolds, pop ups, lift the flaps, long ones, short ones, tall ones, wide ones, so many that I have started making new shelves on my book case by stacking books horizontally on top of the vertical ones. I never grew out of them and I know I never will. It would be impossible to make a Top Ten list.. but here are a few favourites:

 Rhinos don't eat pancakes by Anna Kemp, illustrated by Sara Ogilvie

 Mr. Peek and the misunderstanding at the zoo by Kevin Waldron

 Duck, Death and the Tulip by Wolf Erlbruch

 I am an Artist by Marta Altes

 The General by Michael Foreman, text by Janet Charters

 Augustus And His Smile by Catherine Rayner

 The Arrival by Shaun Tan

 Big Rabbit's Bad Mood by Ramona Badescu, illustrated by Delphine Durand

 The Cockerel and the Fox by Helen Ward

Wave by Suzy Lee

T-Rex Process

What a varied past couple of weeks, I've been doing a couple different samples for publishers, and of some unusual subject matter (maybe I should say, unusual for me). Here is a T-Rex. The publisher wanted flat colour with texture on top, and a ferocious character. I hope I ticked the boxes!

Cardinals

It's been a few months! If you haven't already, and you'd like to, please 'like' my facebook page, Nicola O'Byrne Illustration, which I update almost daily. I have been trying a couple things out for a publisher. The text is lovely but a little tricky to illustrate. The feedback I got for my first sample was that it was lacking in personality and the relationship between the papa bird and the chick wasn't developed.

I've tried to simplify things down and zoom in, hopefully this works better. 

Scandinavian Style Cards

New Style!

In uni I was always concerned about style. Mostly because I didn't seem to have one, or at least not one that I could see. I put this down to the fact that I'm inspired by lots of different things from Japanese ukiyo-e to Brian Wildsmith's heavily textured work; sometimes my work would go one way and sometimes it would go the other; it doesn't worry me so much anymore as I think the main thing is to being able to reproduce a 'look' if you want to. Over the past 2 years I've been developing a couple different styles with the help of publishers and my agents, and today I've done a sample in a new one. Hope you like!

The Mighty Artichoke

I have been racking my brains trying to think of a good ending for my second picture book with Nosy Crow. Today I decided to take a break and do a bit of printmaking instead. The mighty artichoke.

Printing Press

I am the proud owner of a tiny new printing press! I was eager to get stuck in so I printed off 4 small black and white illustrations. I'm really happy with the way they came out so I'm thinking of starting something a little more ambitious.