Asian Festival of Children's Content 2013

I didn't qualify to submit any of my artwork for this year's AFCC because I'm not a published illustrator. So I was pretty excited to see this in my email. Someone I spoke to said that mostly, only "insiders" will get their submissions picked but well, I'm in the process of growing a thick skin and will just send in some dinosaur pictures and see how it goes.

My sprained ankle had me sitting and painting for two days straight since I was advised to rest it. A little mouse carrying a cupcake appeared on my sketchpad, and it got a bit crazy from there. I'm very grateful to Wanxin and Joy for their generous donations towards Madam Wong's shelter in exchange for a little painting :)

(Oh, ankle turned purple today but it's actually alot better and I can walk almost normally!)

Dinosaur day

I really do enjoy drawing these two. And I think that finally, my people drawings are starting to look somewhat decent. Hopefully sometime in the future, I will have enough pieces to submit the semblance of a book to a publisher. I do realise that my artwork and themes are quite "ang moh" (ie Caucasian) and local publishers seem to be geared towards promoting local content. Well, anything can happen :)

Light

Today I tried painting light. Inspiration, Helen Craig, who illustrates Angelina Ballerina. It really isn't easy to get a glow and I guess I'll be slogging away at this for some time...

Paper by 53

One of the nicest drawing apps on the iPad!

Bathroom

Another copy of a bathroom, this time from the illustrations of Joelle Dreidemy. I love his offbeat, wiggly line work. Copying allows me to see how to shade, how to blend colours and work on perspective without actually reading a how-to book.

Practice

I love the art of Allan Ahlberg and own several of his illustrated books, including the Jolly Pocket Postman series because one is just not enough. This is a copy of a row of toilet sinks from "Starting school". I always look at something and think, oh that looks easy, until I actually try drawing it out!

Dino and dog topiary

I've had so much to do since December that I haven't sat down and painted, just for the sake of painting, for quite a while. I have missed painting little leaves!

Anyways,
since I have not done a giveaway in a long time, I decided to give this piece away for free and hope that it will bring a little smile to its new owner :)