some recent childrens book samples- Meg

The elusive Illustrator

Proving to be as elusive as Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster. Rarely seen outside his natural habitat.
Finally, proof that the illustrator Craig Phillips does exist.


Marcelo Baez, Craig Phillips and I got together in a local Wollongong Vietnamese restaurant for lunch and a chat about comics, illustration and one of life's great mysteries the shortcut keys in photoshop.
It was good to catch up with the guys face to face again and hopefully it wont be as far between untill the next meet up.

Marcelo and Craig, very casual.

Craig and I

Spot illustrations

Here are a few spot illustrations that were published in the May /June issue of Coast Kids Magazine.

Ghost boy

this illustration was created for the Deviant art illustrators club site which this months challenge topic was Ghosts.

I really wanted to try and get away from the usual guy in a sheet, spooky ghost yelling boo and inject some sort of feeling or emotion into the image.

not sure if I succeeded but I did try.

Karate Kids

here is an illustration for an article on martial arts for kids in the July/August issue of CoastKids Magazine.

the monster

watched the old 1930 black and white Frankenstein again. It's still a classic. felt like doing a sketch and ended up coloring it.

the background texture is from a photo of some rocks I took down the local beach.

was a quick color job didn't want to spend too much time on it, it was just for fun.

more monsters

just because it was fun. Fish man Says Blurrrb!

Scary ?

here is a bit of fun
A quick sketch with a brush pen and felt tip markers, colored in photoshop.

todays thought

"overnight success takes years of hard work"

CBCA Literary Lunch

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be involved with the Childrens Book Council of Australia's Literary lunch.
The CBCA organised for school groups to come along and have a day with a wide selection of childrens Authors and Illustrators. Dave Hackett also known as Cartoon Dave was the special guest and he presented a 45 minute cartoon workshop that had the kids enthralled and doodling cartoons madly.

I was lucky enough to be a table host and had Dave Hackett as well as a group from Mt Keira public school who were a very well behaved, well manered, charming young girls who had a great time getting Cartoon Dave to sketch crazy cartoons for them.
Dave Hackett did a great job on the day and after spending some time chatting and observing I can see that he has a genuine gift in entertaining a room full of kids and making cartooning easy and fun. He is also a really nice guy and it was a pleasure to be able to meet him in person.

I would have to say a big thank you to Di Bates president of the local CBCA and organiser of this event who invited me to participate in the day It was great to be involved.