The techniques used to create "The Magic Makers"  include the use of 'BRUSHO', and 'COLOURSOFT' crayons. 

 

Brusho is a  transparent, highly pigmented water-colour ink powder giving wonderful bursts of colour when used with a spray bottle. The surface when dry may also be bleached away back to the original paper colour. 

Coloursoft pencils have velvety tips to add lots of bold, vibrant colour to the drawing quickly . They are totally blendable, which allows you to create a variety of subtly different tones and shades. Each illustration has been worked in multiple layers, taking several hours per layer, to create a rich and varied texture. 

 

I love the analogy of having used crayons to illustrate a children's book. The fact that the simplest of art tools, often the first that children will encounter, can be used to inspire them to create something of their own is, in itself, very satisfying. 

 

The creative process for each illustration started with very rough sketches of each aspect within the section of poem I wanted to portray. These were then worked into an eye pleasing composition. The background colours were chosen to be sympathetic with the subject matter and were applied and left to dry. The design was transferred to the page and where necessary  certain areas were bleached back. Each part of the top image, applied with crayon, was layered and blended as I went along. Many areas took numerous hours with a blending stick to create the desired effects. When finished I photographed each illustration and if necessary added text and lighting effects in Photoshop to produce the finished image.

 

In total the production of all the illustrations took about a year to produce.