rebecca wallis illustration

An email from Discovery Class

2007-01-25T17:46:00.000Z

I received this lovely email today.

----
Thank you very much for coming to visit our class. We liked your book about the rainbow frogs. It is in our special book corner so we can read it every day. Thank you very much for teaching us how to draw a really good frog and an alligator. Thank you for the pictures and the postcards. Maybe one day you can come and visit us again.

Love from Discovery class xxx
----

A second school visit

2007-01-25T13:01:00.000Z

I was lucky enough to be invited back to talk to the children of Discovery Class at St Peter's school in Chippenham, and was made very welcome by 27 excitable four and five year olds and their lovely teacher, my sister-in-law Tamsyn. I persuaded her to pose for a photo.

I told the children about the process of illustrating my two picture books, Three Stre-e-etchy Frogs and Rainbow Frogs, then we read the stories and I answered the children's questions before they drew their own versions of one of the pages.

It was great fun to walk around the class and to see their drawings in progress, some of the children faithfully reproduced the red, green and blue frogs mentioned in the text, jumping away from the alligator, but some had obviously been thinking laterally. One little girl had drawn a family of happy penguins sharing the frogs' pond and one little boy had decided to ignore the froggy theme and had chosen to draw some colourful Transformers instead!

The classroom walls were full of the children's photos, drawings and paintings.

Iris and Peregrine

2007-01-12T10:40:00.000Z

These bearded irises were a Christmas gift for Mum, and Dad had the peregrine falcon below.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2006-12-17T00:08:00.000Z

This optimistic little octopus sends warm winter wishes too.

More faces in colour

2006-12-12T10:59:00.000Z

Caricature in colour

2006-12-01T13:24:00.000Z

Thought I'd colour up one of the recent sketchy faces.

Yet more faces.

2006-11-29T12:26:00.000Z

More faces

2006-11-29T12:20:00.000Z

Faces

2006-11-29T11:20:00.000Z

Last weekend, full of coldy germs, I lazily put my feet up and reread a favourite book, the great Figure Drawing without a Model by Ron Tiner, which always inspires me to take up a pencil and get drawing.

The chapter on the anatomy and characteristics of different faces was particularly interesting and I spent ages coming up with a variety of faces, exploring how long and thin or how wide and round they could be and still be feasible. Another section dealt with how and why the topography of a face changes as it ages, which facial muscles lose their elasticity first. All fascinating stuff.

Red Flannel Elephant cards

2006-11-23T11:49:00.000Z

My Red Flannel Elephant Christmas cards by Gretel have arrived, and very lovely they are too! My dodgy photos don't do them justice.

Why not treat yourself to some too?

Life drawing - 6th Nov.

2006-11-08T15:40:00.000Z

The life drawing session on Monday was packed full so I'll be arriving early next time to claim an easel and a decent spot. I started the session sitting in a chair at the edge of the room trying to keep out of the way of the increasingly annoyed huffing puffing man in front who obviously liked to step back three or four large paces after each stab at his paper with the charcoal.

To placate the huffingpuffing man, I squeezed through a gap in the wall of students to sit on the floor and gaze up the very tall model, but not too close of course, didn't want to make her uncomfortable or indeed, to see too much. We were total strangers after all!

I'm sure there's a proper etiquette for life drawing including: try to give everyone enough space to step back from their work, don't make eye contact with the model and most importantly, huffingpuffing man, please try not to break wind and disrupt the silent atmosphere of concentration.

And to any life models out there, please put on some clothes before wandering around to look at everyone's work and make general chit chat!

I'd folded over the large sheets of paper to make them easier to hold, and didn't spray them with fixative (or plain ol' hairspray) til I got back so when opened up, the folded paper revealed a nice ghostly print of each sketch.

Life drawing - 6th Nov.

2006-11-08T14:17:00.000Z

last one of the evening

More on flickr.

Olivia's card

2006-11-01T14:46:00.000Z

'New Baby' card design for little Olivia, the daughter of friends who are both keen surfers.

It was a froggy sort of year

2006-10-31T03:49:00.000Z

Beck W.

Three Stre-e-etchy Frogs

2006-10-31T03:25:00.000Z

Three years after illustrating this book, I finally tracked down some copies to a second hand book shop in Ohio, ordered a few for myself and waited, only slightly impatiently, for the Stretchy Frogs to wing their way over the Atlantic and land in London.

More froggy photos on flickr.

Tiny toad at Trewindle

2006-10-27T03:36:00.000Z

tiny toad

This little character came to visit while I was housesitting recently.

Knowledge Tree

2006-10-10T10:15:00.000Z

This is the result of my first commission using Adobe Illustrator; a logo and set of stationery for a new, soon to be launched consultancy business.

Many thanks to Sara the Illustrator Whiz, who gave me invaluable and instant answers to my many questions, and of course thanks are due to Chris too for all his help.

I like to think I'm also a whiz with Illustrator now, so I'm looking forward to receiving another commission to design something similar!

Clever clover needed

2006-09-13T10:36:00.000Z

Ah, now that's a welcome sight, all the book artwork finished and ready to be posted off into the big wide world.

Very frustrating not to be able to post one or two of the images here, but I promised not to, so I'll be good and wait until it's safely published.

Current work includes a logo and other designs needed for a new consultancy business so I'm attempting to get to grips with Illustrator for the first time.

I'm going to need any luck this scruffy little weed in the garden has to spare...

Camellia

2006-08-02T01:47:00.000Z

The publishers of the book I'm currently working on have said they'd prefer I didn't blog about it for now, or show any of the illustrations until it is all safely printed and distributed.

So, in order to show a recent image, here's a camellia, one of a series of drawings for Fran and James' wedding this Saturday.

Castles and lighthouses.

2006-08-01T14:10:00.000Z

These drawings of Carn Brea castle and one of the Carn's many granite rock formations will be on the top table at Fran and James' wedding reception on Saturday.

Each of the other reception tables will also have a drawing, including St. Michael's Mount and Godrevy Lighthouse.

Lifedrawing - 19th June.

2006-06-20T16:48:00.000Z

Lots of short poses this week, ranging between 30 seconds and 15 minutes.

Still feeling rusty but the drawing muscles are beginning to creak back into life again.

15 minute poses

2006-06-20T12:24:00.000Z

15 minute pose
Beck W.

Lifedrawing

2006-06-12T05:11:00.000Z

Last Tuesday I went along to my first lifedrawing class since about 1998 and thoroughly enjoyed it, despite my rustiness.

Great fun to be messing about with sticks of charcoal again, capturing poses and gestures only held for 30 seconds or 5 minutes at a time, there were some longer poses of 20 and 25 minutes too. Perfect.

During the break, when most people went off for a drink, we had a nosy around at everyone else's drawings, and I recognised the work of at least one or two bloggers I read regularly.

I definitely need more practise, so I'll be going back for more soon.

A rough sketch for a mural.

2006-06-01T06:43:00.000Z

The random blobs are hummingbirds, toucans, parrots and butterflies, with orchids, gerberas and 'marvel of peru' flowers.

Not sure why it seemed like a good idea to only use South American species, but it makes me very thankful for the advent of google image search, the days of the long walk to the library and it's photocopier seem a very long time ago.

Trit-Trot, Smickle-Smockle

2006-05-18T09:38:00.000Z

I'm waiting for feedback on thumbnails sketches for a children's book at the moment, and it all has to be kept under my hat until the publisher gives me permission to discuss it, so in the meantime here's another of yesterday's finds.

I used to love Enid Blyton stories when I was little and these Chimney Corner Stories were probably read to me many times, it's full of tales of Trit-Trot the Pony, Dame Tiptap, Tell-Tale Tippy, Winkle-Pip the Gnome and the Disagreeable Monkey.

I'd forgotten how often the naughty characters are punished at the end of stories though, poor little Tell-Tale Tippy gets whalloped by a magic walking stick each time he has a bit of a gossip and god knows what happens to the Disagreeable Monkey, haven't reread that one just yet.

There are no illustration credits to be found in this book at all, I wonder who drew these lovely little well behaved children and their helpful toys.

"This picture makes me happy" said Little Bear

2006-05-17T12:53:00.000Z

Earlier today, on the way back from feeding Bitey, a friend's tubby tabby, I saw two jolly builders sitting in a front garden offering free books to passers by, exclaiming they'd already read them all and couldn't bear to throw them away.

I couldn't resist looking through the boxes, amongst the diaries from 1986 and the large print war stories were some lovely little children's books including this great one illustrated by Maurice Sendak.

I know how you feel Little Bear, the picture makes me happy too.

The Sultan's Elephant

2006-05-09T07:20:00.000Z

London played host to a wonderful, inspirational, completely free outdoor theatrical spectacle for four days over last weekend and I was delighted to be able to see it on the beautiful sunny Friday and a slightly greyer Sunday.

The Sultan's Elephant, performed by Royal de Luxe and inspired by the stories of Jules Verne, tells of a Sultan "tormented in his dreams by visions of a little girl who was travelling through time" and who been transformed by his nightmares into a 5 metre tall marionette; he commissioned a 19th century engineer to construct a time travelling mechanical elephant the height of a three storey building to track her down. As you do.

Click here to read more of the story.

On Thursday a rocket crashed into Waterloo Place and some time later the 'little girl' stepped out and spent the next few days exploring her surroundings, meeting the elephant, exercising in St James' Park and swinging small children from her arms.

The elephant carried a cast of characters who were busy all the time, dancing and performing for the Sultan as it trundled up and down the Mall, spraying water over the crowds, chomping on the trees, visiting Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus with enthralled crowds following in its wake.

More information from the BBC and more of my photos on flickr.

tree frogs

2006-05-08T06:38:00.000Z

Seeing this mural again reminded me of something one of the anaesthetists told me a while ago, apparently they ask nervous patients "can you see the tree frogs?" pause for the patient's reply ... and then "but there's four of them!" Boom boom.

In case of emergency, pull frog.

finished mural

2006-05-03T07:15:00.000Z

Here are a few photos of the finished mural, taken on Sunday before varnishing and in poor light so they're only snapshots really.

The view from this end.

The view from that end.

Of toucans and tea breaks.

2006-04-29T17:15:00.000Z

Today I wore blue surgical scrubs with a very fetching matching disposable hat and white theatre clogs, it's very glamorous painting murals in hospital corridors you know. A spooky empty echoing corridor this time, very different to working in busy children's wards where small voices offer help and jovial Dads point and say "oh, you've missed a bit, ha!"

Then there was the time a busy bone-saw could be heard in the background while I was painting the 'Welcome to Trauma Theatres' lettering. Eesh.

Anyway to get back to today, I was asked to design a mural for a long corridor wall and there were enough funds left for two days work; we agreed on a 'wavy' procession of South American birds and butterflies travelling towards the rainforest I'd painted in one of the anaesthetic rooms a couple of years ago.

As usual it took a while to get up the courage to make the first mark on the wall, with only a warm ball of bluetack instead of the 'edit undo' safety net.

Once started though, I could've happily spent all day drawing birdies on walls, but thought I should start adding some paint really. Just hope it'll all get finished in time tomorrow.

Stopping for a quick cuppa in the staffroom and flicking through an old copy of Cornwall Today magazine, it was great to see one of my own illustrations, so a pretty good day altogether.

Unless of course, I've painted the birdies on the wrong wall...

a few of the finished pics

2006-04-26T16:45:00.000Z

Illustration Friday - robot

2006-04-26T05:20:00.000Z

A little bit of robot love.

Rough sketches and sketchy roughs.

2006-04-22T11:00:00.000Z

It's about time I got around to uploading a few images from the latest project, the people at Surrey County Council's Early Years Service were a joy to work with and so without further ado, or any ado at all really, here are a few of the forty four sketchy roughs.

What is an ado anyway I wonder? A small fuzzy creature like a bee maybe, or a large knobbly one like a gnu. Ado, a bee, gnu.

Right, got to go and doodle a few ados now.

Happy Easter

2006-04-17T05:50:00.000Z

Hooray

2006-02-24T10:29:00.000Z

An email arrived this morning from the admin folk at childrensillustrators.com saying there's only 7 days left on my year's portfolio subscription and I grumpily decided not to renew as it hasn't brought me any work over that time.

But then a few hours later, I received a phonecall from someone needing 39 interesting sounding illustrations and they'd found me via childrensillustrators.com.

Blimey. Looks as though I should renew the subscription after all.

I sold my first monsteroo this morning too, so it seems things are looking up, hooray!

Dreamweaver Wrangling

2006-02-17T12:20:00.000Z

I've been busily pruning, updating, tweaking and tidying my website and its very much still a work in progress, the page showing recent educational illustrations like the one above for example is only half finished. Its beginning to come together though.

Any feedback/constructive criticism would be much appreciated, if anyone has a spare minute and would care to explore...

Thanks.

some promo feedback

2006-02-10T13:31:00.000Z

Returned after a week away in lovely, snowy Avoriaz to find four identical little envelopes waiting for me, addressed in my own handwriting. They were replies to the promos I'd sent out to London publishers, all four saying in effect "thanks, but no thanks".

One art director replied saying they'll keep my samples on file and another filled in the response page saying she thinks my style is more suited to educational publishers than trade ones, which is useful to hear.

So I'm assuming the remaining seven samples are all on noticeboards being gazed at lovingly by art directors all over the city as I haven't received any more returns (yet).

Got to think positive! Now to find a long list of educational publishers addresses...

Illustration Friday - Cats

2006-01-26T12:15:00.000Z

A nice easy Illustration Friday topic this week, just 'cats', great. I've found four old pieces of work and put them together as a little group, maybe the big cats are stretching the theme a bit, but never mind. The black cat and the tiger were for the Holiday Happenings series one for Halloween and one for Chinese New Year. The lion is illustrating one of the signs of the zodiac and he is currently being used on a Slovenian website and the remaining ginger cat was just for fun.

hello there

2006-01-26T11:27:00.000Z

Hooray, I finally got some self promotional things in the post. It took me much too long to produce 11 sets of letters, 3 prints, a simple response card and an SAE, but it's a start at least and now I've introduced myself to a few more potential clients. A "hello there, I draw - hire me. My website is here ..." My letter was a wee bit more wordy of course, but not much.

All 11 recipients are based in London, so I'll phone them in a couple of weeks time and try to arrange meetings. In the meantime I'd better update my website and sort out my portfolio. Yikes.

But first, I think I'll procrastinate a bit more by checking the topic for Illustration Friday this week and seeing if I have any old things that'll fit.

a new home for a Nelliephant

2006-01-24T12:38:00.000Z

My parents are very organised and recently asked what I'd like for my birthday (which isn't for ages). I knew straight away as I'd just been looking at my friend Gretel's gorgeous 'Nelliephant' prints.

Mum let on it's arrived and she's really impressed with it, thankyou Gretel, I can't wait to see it too!

One more promotional piece and last Friday's school visit

2006-01-23T11:30:00.000Z

I decided to use a Rainbow frogs illustration as another promo piece and I've printed out a little heap of them ready to send out. Unfortunately this gobbled up all my cyan and magenta printer ink and has prevented the printing of any letters to accompany them, oops. Hopefully, the new ink is winging it's way to me now and so there will only be a small hiccup in proceedings.

Last Friday's visit to St. Peters' school went very well, Tamsyn asked some well-timed questions when I dried up a bit in front of a sea of attentive little faces and the audience also had some prepared questions. One little boy asked "how did you colour inside the lines so beautifully?" and later in the day he told me my Halloween book was his favourite, because he really liked the way I'd drawn the vampire's teeth. Aaw, needless to say I think he's a little hero.

I was also asked "how did you stick the little plastic frogs on?" which is a fair question.

The children seemed to like learning about the process of illustration and then copying my hastily drawn frog picture later in the day. Although one small girl groaned "oh no, not again!" when Tamsyn announced the plan, I'm pleased to report she drew a great little frog with huge eyes and multi-coloured legs.

I really enjoyed my time with Class 2 and stayed for the whole day, joining in with their lessons, helping them to read through their 'key words' and then attending the hour-long 'Fizzy Disco' in the evening too, where my new little friends danced to the conga and played musical bumps in their best party clothes.

So, all in all, a pretty successful first school visit I think. I need to come up with more of a presentation, tying together all the different elements I'd brought along: the art direction, roughs, copies of artwork and the final books etc but that can all be worked on.

bookmarks for tomorrow's class

2006-01-19T08:36:00.000Z

Self promotion time again

2006-01-17T10:20:00.000Z

It's mailout time again and these are my latest. Printed onto A6 pieces of glossy photo paper they'll be sent out with a covering letter to as many art directors as I can find in the Children's Writers' and Artists' Yearbook. Then in a week or two, I'll phone all those folks and try to arrange an appointment to show them my portfolio.

Well, that's the theory anyway, now all I need to do is completely redo my portfolio and to pluck up some courage from somewhere.

Tuppleballs and Chubbawubs, not to mention Twizzlewillies

2006-01-16T10:10:00.000Z

My second set of books were all written by Cathy Drinkwater Better, who must be very proud of such a great name.

Rachael Phillips and I worked on these illustrations together for very long days, all the paintings lay along her huge kitchen table jostling for space with the remnants of innumerable sarnies and cups of tea.

Once my pencil roughs were approved, I drew them on watercolour paper and handed them to Rach, who painted them and returned them so I could add the black ink outlines. After four books worth of tuppleballs, polydactyls, twizzlewillies and chubbawubs, I think we went a wee bit barmy. It was all good fun though and I was certainly disappointed to discover very few, if any, of these books were published and distributed due to a lack of funds somewhere along the line.

The Cuddly Beasties
Originally uploaded by Beck W.

planning for my first school visit

2006-01-11T11:55:00.000Z

I'm off on my first school visit on the 20th, only just over a week away yikes, I'd better get to work deciding what to say to Mrs. Wallis' class at St. Peters school in Chippenham, Wiltshire. The similarity of the teacher's name to mine is no coincidence, Tamsyn's married to my baby brother and over Christmas she collared me to arrange a date to visit. I'm hoping her class of 4 and 5 olds won't be too tough a crowd.

I've always intended to visit schools and discuss my work with the children, but have never quite got around to it. I'll take my trusty laptop and graphics tablet to hook up to their fancy 'interactive whiteboard', no more dull ol' blackboards like in my day. Crikey, now I feel old. I'll also take along some of my books produced for Dingles and Company. I illustrated ten books for the Community of Counting series and twelve for the Holiday Happenings series. Both series were published in English and bilingual English/Spanish versions.

I'll finally be able to show someone how completely over the top I went with the detail in some of the illustrations for these books.

Barbie the art director wanted the images to be at a very high resolution, 900 dots per inch, so she could choose and enlarge elements of the design at a later stage. This meant I could 'zoom in' to a ridiculous degree and add things like a highlight in the pupil of a spider's eye. In the final printed book 'Number Ten - Where is the Hen?' the spider itself was only just visible if peered at very, very closely.

Hm, think I could've saved myself a lot of time there.

I'm looking forward to seeing what questions the children have for me, hm I'd better do some homework before I go so I can come up with some answers for them.

2006-01-06T06:40:00.000Z

swaddled waddling in winter woollies

2006-01-05T07:02:00.000Z

Walking around Clissold Park at the weekend, I saw lots of little children waddling around happily despite being swaddled head to toe in many layers of bulky winter woollies. This quick doodle took much too long, oops. Maybe I should come up with a new year's resolution after all; to draw and sketch much more often, and to speed up.

Swaddled toddlers waddling woollily.
Swaddled woolly toddlers waddling.
Woolly swaddly toddling waddlers.

2005-12-16T13:05:00.000Z

This box set contains my first published books. I remember being really delighted there were finally some books in existence with my name on the cover. Now, after a lull in business I need to get going again on the ol' self promotion and motivation front. Remembering how I felt when I first saw this set certainly helps with the motivation side of things.

So, now I'm rereading the invaluable Children's Writers and Artists Yearbook 2006 and I've also bought a copy of an e-book, 'Illustration 101' by Max Scratchmann which is looking good so far and is full of useful 'hot tips.'

Snow!

2005-11-26T16:02:00.000Z

Rainbow Frogs cover

2005-10-31T11:29:00.000Z

Rainbow Frogs cover

I worked on two picture books about frogs last year, this one written by Melissa Tyrell and 'Three Stretchy Frogs' written by Dawn Bentley. I haven't been able to get hold of a copy of the latter yet, as it was published only in the USA.

click here to buy Rainbow Frogs from amazon

Illustration Friday: Lost

2005-10-10T18:34:00.000Z

I wonder if the ball will stay lost for long...

Illustration Friday: Float

2005-10-07T13:43:00.000Z

A doodle inspired by a recent local news story, a possible Caiman sighting in a Cornish duckpond.

link

my first Illustration Friday pic: Fresh

2005-09-26T13:37:00.000Z

What could be fresher than a glass of milk straight from the cow?