The Night Before Christmas

At the end of last year/beginning of this year I had the opportunity to illustrate a version of The Night Before Christmas - a poem by Clement C Moore. I was very pleased to be asked because it is in fact a book I have always wanted to illustrate! In fact I wrote about it on my blog back in 2012.

I illustrated the whole book in 3d - using the same techniques I used for my Witch's Cat books and the Glitterbelle books. I thought I would show you some of the work that went into this book behind the scenes and a few of the final images. 

This image was used for the endpapers and is actually one of my favourites. 

The houses are actually all flat card cutouts standing in front of one another. They are not 3d houses. I just painted them to look 3d! I used fairylights behind the windows. I used yellow cellophane on the windows to really give them that warm glow. Here's a behind the scenes snap of the houses, before I lit the sky up. You can see the fairy lights and the wire in front.

I light the sky up by shining lamps from the back, though all the tiny pinprick holes and stars. It makes them very sparkly. You can tell I used a few different lamps to light up the whole sky as some of the light is a different colour. I quite like that though. Some of the stars are more of an ice white and some of them are a warmer white.

I think the scenes I enjoyed creating the most were the bedroom scenes. I always find bedroom scenes fun to make. I sewed some miniature christmassy patchwork quilts for the beds.

This was the parents room - before I put the characters in. I was quite pleased with how I made the little bedside lights. I bought some electric tealights from the pound shop and stuck the plastic flame bit through a hole in the top of the bedside table. Then I put a tracing paper tree in front of it. I like all the little details you can put in a bedroom, the snowman mugs by the bedside, the tiny little paper chains (fiddly to make!) the miniature paintings on the walls. I also designed the wallpaper.

This was the children's room. not quite the final image as the final image also has sweets and sugarplums floating in the air along with the fairies. Secretly I actually prefer this version though...

I made the Christmas tree out of pipe cleaners and stuck sequins on it for baubles. Then I used a string of dollshouse fairylights to light it up. I sewed the teddy and the rabbit on the top right.

These ones are 'in progress' shots...

The first image I created for the whole book was the one with Santa on the rooftop. I had to create a sleigh for this scene which was fun. I remember watching Mob Wives as I covered all the tiny presents in glitter. It's funny, I always remember what I was watching or listening to at the time of creating a piece of artwork when I look at that artwork again in the future.

Here's Santa in the chimney! This was before I changed his sack to one made from fabric. It didn't look very good like this...

Here's a test shot just to try and get the placement of everything right.

And another one. I used cotton wool for the snow. If you buy it in a roll then when you lay it out it looks like a sheet of soft pristine snow. 

This was the final image. You can see what a difference lighting makes! I think it looks much more cosy and Christmassy here with everything being darker. The stars glow more and I think it had more atmosphere. I sprinkled glitter on the cotton wool to make it look like the snow sparkling in the starlight.

I like how the reindeers had glitter and sequins on them. This one has various different moon and star sequins on him.

I had to make the reindeers in a smaller scale for another scene. Otherwise the set would have been HUGE! These reindeers are pretty small, about 2.5 cm.

I had to make the sleigh in a smaller scale too.

This was part of the final image. It wasn't possible to find fairy lights small enough for this scene so I had to add them in Photoshop. I MIGHT have been able to think of a way to create the illusion of very tiny fairy lights somehow if I had had more time. But I just didn't. 

Here are the reindeers flying in the sky!

To create something like this I put the reindeers on long stalks in front of the starry sky. Here's a test shot.

The houses also had to be made in two sizes. There was the scale I have shown above and then another even smaller scale.

I used electric tealights again to light up the insides of the houses.  They were... interesting to photograph. Basically it took me billions of shots to get this one right. I tried all sorts of different lighting effects...

The trees were all made from paper rolled into cones with V shapes cut out for the leaves/branches. And then glittered of course!

There are quite a few scenes in the book which are set in the living room. I quite liked making the living room. The tree was fun to do.

So sparkly!

Here's a test shot of the whole scene. I think a few things changed in it for the final version.

And here's the last scene in the book. Santa and his reindeer flying away!

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the behind the scenes for this book. I enjoyed creating it.

There's a little video for it here too:

Hope you're having a festive December!

X

Happy Halloween Witch's cat!

'My Mom is a Witch and I am her special Witch's Cat. She is a good witch and together we are just right.'

My little witch's cat (who I have always called Tabitha) returns for a second story where she has to decide whats she wants to wear for Halloween. Should she be a white ghost? Or a green frog? Or a pink ballerina? Or...?

Again, I created all the pictures by making 3d dollhouse size sets and then photographing them.

Here are a few of my favourite scenes from the book:

I do really love the kitchen scene because I like how I managed to get the light coming in through the window and on to the table. That took me hundreds of shots to get right! I also really enjoyed making all the tiny cookies and the bar of chocolate.

The cookies are all made from cardboard and painted and the rolling pin is made from rolled up paper!

My other favourite scene is the one I have used as my blog header where Mom and Witch's Cat are going shopping.  In the book it says 'COSTUME SHOP' on the blue banner bit but I don't have that version on my computer as the publisher put the writing on. 

I really loved trying out different lighting for this image. I am a fan of dramatic lighting so I enjoyed trying out a quick snapshot where it was darker and it looks like Mom and Witch's Cat are going late night shopping. I think it looks cosy when the shop is all lit up like that. However, I know the lighter, brighter one works much better for the book. I was just experimenting for fun.

Another scene I enjoyed making was the one with the ballet tutus in it. I loved making all the tiny little tulle skirts and all the glittery crowns. I remember my string of multicoloured miniature fairy lights broke during making this scene. I was being too rough with them, pulling them on and off the blu tack too hard. I had to rush to the nearest miniatures shop (40 mins away) to buy more!

This one was just a quick snapshot taken on my smaller camera. You can see the whole set. I had it mirrored on one side as I thought that would be fitting for a costume shop but that part never made it into the shot in the end.

Here are Mom and Witch's Cat entering the costume shop. I think this was the first set I made of the whole book.

And here is Witch's cat looking at the vampire section. Should she be a vampire?... or is a vampire too toothy maybe?

What about the tutu? (I don't know why she looks so unimpressed here. I would have LOVED a tutu like this as a child!)

What about a skeleton?

Here's a view of the whole skeleton set. I actually made it quite a lot bigger that it ended up needing to be. I was originally going to have lots of things in the box that the skeleton is on top of but ended up zooming in on the image more.

All the little boxes in the background I constructed out of card and hung up on wire hooks. It took a long time!

And here's just a work in progress shot of Witch's Cat eating her boiled egg for tea.

I have to say I absolutely loved illustrating this book. I had about six weeks to do it and I remember that it was intense. I actually enjoy intense bursts of work though, I think I work quite well under pressure. It was the middle of summer and some days were quite hot and I just remember sitting in my studio/bedroom at the time, just working solidly every single day. I had breaks for bike rides and eating but that was it. I don't think I even really socialized during that time. It felt so good to finish the whole thing at the end of those six weeks and especially because we went to Cornwall with friends straight afterwards which was so fun and relaxing after doing all that work. It was a good time in my life. I think back on it all with fondness. :)

I hope you enjoyed my post about the book!

X

Studio Tour and Interview

I did an interview and studio tour over on Andrea Skyberg's blog earlier this week. Link HERE.

the creative process

The creative process is a funny thing. For example, this weekend I had an idea for a new picture book. Contrary to the pictures accompanying this post, it has nothing to do with penguins! But the idea was led there by penguins.

It started when I bought a pair of penguin socks in New Look. I really really loved the little ice skating penguin on the socks so much that I bought three pairs.  Look how adorable he is!

Then, on Friday, I was making mini Christmas cards with Celestine. We made the usual, Christmas tree ones, reindeer ones snowman ones... and then I remembered my socks and thought 'penguins!'

I just loved the design of the little penguin so much that I painted some bigger ones in my sketchbook afterwards. And I though 'hmm,' this little penguin would make a good little character- though of course it was still a blatent copy of the sock penguin at this point.

Then, led by that thought another thought came and I developed the penguin into another character- still a bird but not a penguin. And I LOVED my new little character (which I am not going to show on here just yet) and a story idea for her popped into my head.  And so a new book idea was born.

And I just thought how interesting the creative process is. You never know where it's going to take you. You can end up with something completely different and surprising from what you started with.