Illustrating Stories - The Secret Garden.

The Secret Garden - a postable story book card

This project was one of the most exciting of last year and a few months ago the finished books arrived. Like many stories it began in the bookshop where Elspeth had seen my cards and asked me to illustrate some of her storybook cards for Purple Pomegranate Press; these would also be published by  Story House and are designed for teaching English as a foreign language. The books have all sorts of activities in the back such as word searches and creative writing prompts  as well as vocabulary notes throughout which I hadn't expected; it really is nice to see the finished thing all printed and real. Elspeth has since produced a storybook card version which you can find on her website and in my shop.
Here am looking a bit startled and pleased! 

Mug shot

In The Secret Garden I chose to work differently, using inks and watercolour and looking at the overgrown garden belonging to our landlord’s cottage; all yew hedges, tangled clematis and rusty planters. I had forgotten, until I re-read the story, that the Secret Garden is set in Yorkshire and I used to live on the North York Moors (and work as a gardener) so I had plenty of imagery to inspire me.  I tried using the traditional methods of transferring roughs using a lightbox but in the end I found it easier to add separately drawn characters to my painted “sets” using Photoshop to make a kind of digital collage. I didn’t study illustration formally (my degree was textiles and surface design) so I do feel as though I learned on the job and probably the hardest part was overcoming my own insecurities about that (and also not having any handy children to draw from! )

I’ve loved having the opportunity to work on these projects and learned so much in the process.

Elspeth’s idea of sending small story books as cards is particularly lovely at the moment when people are looking at ways to keep in touch with family and friends.    

Sketchbook pages ready for characters and detail to be added

My favourite page - Mary in the winter garden