Annette Rand's Blog, page 5

Making videos

Today was a day for making videos of my two most recent books. I’m not used to speaking directly to the camera, but I hope it helps to give a reasonable impression of what the books are like.

Planning the next book

It looks as if the theme of the next colouring book will be…

Wait for it…

Rats!

It’s probably not going to be the most profitable of subjects, as the market will presumably the subset of people who both like rats and enjoy colouring. But the rat community have been so supportive of the butterflies book that I’ve put the intended next topic on hold and switched to ratties. I have a good collection of rat drawings to start things off, and it’s beginning to looks as if it’s not as hard to decorate ratties as I thought it would be.

Drawing Butterflies

I’ve had something of a side project on the go. When my children were little I used to draw butterflies for them to colour in. They would stick them to pencils and run around making them flutter.

Somewhere along the way the world has caught up and drawing things to colour in is once again a useful skill, so I’ve revisited the pastime and made a book full of butterflies to colour in. (I don’t expect anyone to cut them out and run around with them this time.) 

Here’s a colouring sheet to give an idea of what the pictures are like. This butterfly isn’t in the book, I kept her free to fly the Internet. It would be great if you could share her picture wherever you want to.

No rules – colouring for grown-ups

The new interest in colouring for adults has brought back happy memories for me. The thing I enjoy most about colouring is that there are no rules about how to colour. You don’t have to cover the whole sheet, you can just pick out the pieces of design that appeal to you and leave other areas white. Black is another useful way to add emphasis to areas. If there’s an area of hatching, you don’t have to pick out each line, you can use an overall colour and let the pattern speak for itself. Everyone enjoys a different style of pattern and colouring, but there are certainly enough books to please everyone nowadays. Colour away!

I love rats, I do!

That’s the title of my new book. The phrase is something of a family joke, because many years ago, whilst running a ratabilia stall at a local rat show, there was a small girl with an enormous pet rat who repeatedly came up to us to say ‘I love rats, I do’. Ever since then, whenever the rats have done something particularly cute, silly or gross, we’ve come out with the phrase.

I knew that this book should be a children’s book, but it’s taken me a very long time to put it together. First of all, it needed pictures, so I bought some graphics software and a graphics tablet to plug into my pc, and set about learning to draw. Well as I’ve said on here before, it turns out that the best way around my colour-blindness is to draw directly onto the photographs. Smudge painting. Even cheating like that, it’s taken me several months to gather the right photos and turn them into images that work with the book and that feel good enough to inflict on the public. Then there was the text. It took a couple of false starts to begin moulding it into something I felt right about. Somehow I hit upon a look and a style that suited the topic, and off I went. It felt as if the images were taking forever to produce, and then suddenly they were all finished and it was just the text that needed a final polish. The typeface was a particularly happy find. It’s opendyslexic alta, which is very easy to read and suited the style of the book beautifully.

So now I’m watching the first few purchases and waiting to see how the reviews go, if any come along.

Time to start work on the next book, I guess.

Happy 14th Birthday to The Midlands Rat Club

We went to our local rat show last Sunday. It was the club’s 14th birthday, and I’ve been going to the shows almost from the beginning. The Midlands Rat Club is a very pet oriented and family friendly club, but we do enjoy showing our rats as well.

It’s taken me a few days to arrange all the photos for the club website, but I think they’re all in now. I’ve also put together a video of the show.

This is Mr Pickles. He’s a rehome boy whom I’ve had just ...

This is Mr Pickles. He’s a rehome boy whom I’ve had just over a year. I was told he was a year old when I had him, but I estimated him at around nine months as his roaning hadn’t faded much. One year later and he’s still not as faded as you’d expect. He was very odd and ‘broken’ when he came, and I scared him into a relapse a few months after then by moving his group into a different cage, but he seems to have mended completely now and has recently coped with baby intros and a cage move very well.

Whimsy

I forgot to post Whimsy’s photo last night. She’s a black hooded doe from Kirkby Pet Welfare, and is two years old. She has a permanent head tilt from a previous ear infection, but that doesn’t slow her down at all.

Verity

This is Verity. She’s a Russian blue agouti Essex and is 25 months old. She’s great granny to the recent babies, and she’s quite fond of a chunk of bread.

This is Unanimous Boots, a 25 month old black rex. He’s ...

This is Unanimous Boots, a 25 month old black rex. He’s not the butchest of bucks, but he’s dad to my March litter who have all turned out really nicely.