CHILDREN'S BOOKS ILLUSTRATORS RULE....

I'm jumping ship... I wanna be an illustrator of children's books!! Yes, I'm being totally disloyal to my chosen profession as an author. But such was the calibre of illustrators at the Conference, even I could be turned! They included Anne Spudvilas, Greg Holfeld, Sarah David, Jeannie Baker, Leigh Hobbs and Freya Blackwood. 

Anne shared her wonderful artist's journals of charcoal and ink drawings she used while drawing The Peasant Prince.

Anne Spudvilas

Greg's talk focussed on Reading Pictures - picture books versus graphic novels (lots of audience participation too). 

Greg Holfeld

Sarah Davis

Sarah examined how text and image work together to create meaning and involved lots of practical hands-on activities that will help teachers and T-Ls to analyse and create visual narratives with students. 

Leigh Hobbs

Leigh focussed on creating unique characters and what to do with them. Lots of laughing!
Jeannie's workshop focussed on making collages and collage picture books as a medium of expression for children.

Jeannie Baker

I attended Freya's workshop. She shared how she created her gorgeous illustrations for Harry and Hopper and several other books. Freya even demonstrated her method of drawing a child so we could do it ourselves (well, attempt to do it ourselves). She's a very good teacher and we managed to produce something - my effort is at the bottom of this page (just the head as I didn't master body proportions, lol). A great workshop!
I wish I could take Freya home with me.

Freya Blackwood

It was a perfect day for beginning or developing illustrators to learn from some of Australia's best children's books illustrators. Where were you??

Pity the legs went off the page!

Here's my effort at illustrating in Freya Blackwood's workshop. I'm going to practice every day from now on ... when I finish that final draft, and tackle that other third draft and ...  

The authors and illustrators go to Ipswich

Tatty Rat, Paige Turner and I headed down to Ipswich today to see authors and illustrators in action. Brilliant blue skies, cool breezes and the lovely art precinct of Ipswich! 

Tatty Rat's favourite illustrators today were Greg  and Narelle.

Kids from local schools headed to the Ipswich Civic Centre, the Community Art Gallery, the CWA Hall and the Masonic Lodge Hall (all within a 2 minute walk of each other) where Festival authors and illustrators had settled in for the day - like Andy Griffiths, Tristan Bancks, Greg Holfeld, James Moloney, Chris Bongers, Narelle Oliver, John Heffernan, Leigh Hobbs.

Andy Griffiths

Narelle Oliver talking about the Barking Owl

 Paige Turner went to everyone's sessions and decided all of the presenters were her favourite authors and illustrators. (Editor: very diplomatic is our Paige!)

And the list goes on!!

Andy Griffiths - author    

Greg Holfeld - illustrator

Gus Gordon - author 

James Moloney - author