It just occurred to me that I can show pieces from books I have worked on…
The first book to show is ‘Red Light, Green Light’, written by Anastasia Suen and published by Harcourt a few years ago.
A fun rhyming text and easy to illustrate, I tried to experiment with different coloured outlines as well as trying to capture views of traffic and landscape that children wouldn’t normally see, or they might see on TV. Up to that point It was difficult for me to change my style of painting which had become very recognisable. The difficulty was in persuading publishers to allow me to change.
I believe this book was only published in the US. One of the first ideas for an image in this book is the one below. I’ve never been in a helicopter but the bird’s eye view of a city seems to be one of the most used in cinema and television and we all take it for granted. I’m sure this secondary experience will be easily surpassed by the real thing. One day…
The Illustrationist 