I have had the honour to work together with Harris Tobias (The Greer Agency, A Felony of Birds) on a book of riddles for children. After a discussion, we both decided that a realistic style would best suit the book, as it is our hope that children may learn about the world and its many animals, and learn to appreciate our environment. Hopefully they'll grow up to be nature-loving people!
We decided to have the riddles on the right side of the book, and if possible, leave a bit of clues for children to guess the answer. The answers will be on the next page, popping out of the background slightly. A short description is there for the older children to read more about the animal/natural phenomenon.
The method of illustration is photo-manipulating with digital painting on top. I want to keep the illustrations (especially the animals) as realistic as possible, but with some adjustments on the angles of maybe a foot, the head, or the placement of the tail. Even though I try to keep the colours as realistic as possible, there are occasions where I would paint over with different strokes of colours to keep it refreshing.
