Parrots and whales

I’m looking at the calendar and I can’t believe how quickly time goes by.

I wrote the last blog before Christmas. Since then I have painted lots and lots of goats, some trolls, birds and parrots, whales and a lion.

Most of this drawings and paintings were wrong. The goats’ horns are too long, the troll is too scary, I don’t need the most of the birds and I’m not sure if the lion is brave enough.

I’m illustrating “The Three Billy Billy Goats Gruff” and a board book at the same time.I like working on “The Three Billy Billy Goats Gruff”, but it seems that my idea of how the troll should look is different from the idea of the publisher. I’m doing more sketches and I’m waiting for more feedback.

Meanwhile I’m skipping into the world of  board books.

I mentioned it before. Doing a simple picture for a board book doesn’t mean that it’s easy and quick. To be honest it takes me probably as long as a full colour double spread for a picture book. Many things go wrong and I have to change it again and again, but it may be just me.

So here is a photo of how it looks when you are printing lots of birds.

I’ll cut these printed papers into pieces and collaged a couple of birds out of them.

Here is a parrot.

And here is a whale. I like painting whales.

This one was painted for my book “Blue Penguin”, but the picture didn’t make it into the book at the end. It’s a shame, I like the picture.

Now talking about nice pictures of a whale. This whale was sent to me by Hugo Booth. He is nine years old and this is his illustration for a beautiful Czech story book “Zahrada” (Garden). Written and illustrated by Jiri Trnka.I absolutely love the drawing.

I had a look at my sketchbook for more whales and here are some.This is one of my latest sketches.

One more.

And a bird sitting on a chair at the end.

I’m now about to put the board book to one side and have another go with the troll.