Riley and the Curious Koala Blog Tour with Tania McCartney
www.taniamccartney.com
ILLUSTRATING THE RILEY SERIES
A fabulous sneak peek at the illustrative process behind the Riley travelogue books with sensational illustrator Kieron Pratt.
Writing a book is great fun… but illustrating it is even more fun, especially when someone else who’s really clever does it for you.
My first Riley book – (Riley and the Sleeping Dragon, was illustrated by Canadian Mo Qovaizi. I never met Mo – he was based in Canada and me in Beijing at the time. So we did the entire book by email.
This worked out surprisingly well and Mo provided me charming illustrations that first brought Riley to life…
…but once I was ready for book two – Riley and the Dancing Lion, I had already returned to Australia and now looked back on Mo’s illustrations with old-time whimsy… something like Disney’s Steamboat Willy/Mickey Mouse incarnation, if you will.
But how to find a new, fresh talent to illustrate my second Riley book?
I first found acutely clever Canberran, Kieron Pratt, under a cabbage leaf on a cart trundling along a bumpily road to FunnyVille. He was wearing a loin cloth made of hilarity and clutched a computerised graphic artist’s pen that he was chomping on ferociously. Let’s just he changed my life (and that image has been burned into my retinas for life, too).
The illustrations Kieron brought to my Riley series still cause very embarrassing fits of laughter at my computer screen (think coffee spurted on keyboard… and mums who’ve had babies will also empathise) and kids just love them soooo much. At school readings, I’ve lost count of the times my reading has been swallowed up in a room full of laughter and pointing and giggling and general roustabouting, and let’s not even talk about the time Kieron joined me at a school to show the kids how he draws the Riley characters.
Thank goodness the school provided a naughty chair, is all I can say.
Working with Kieron on the illustrations for Riley and the Dancing Lion was a barrel of laughs and honestly some of the funnest time I have spent doing anything at all. Not only is he super talented, he is quite simply super funny – and his drawing processes were amazing to watch unfold.
For Riley and the Dancing Lion, Kieron drew a series of lions in various states of dance. We did virtually the entire book by email – whereupon I would send Kieron the text and he would create a sketch pertaining to that text. Here are some examples of the very first Chinese fan dancers Kieron drew…
I decided to go with the dancer in the dress, so Kieron sent me a more precise sketch of how each dancer would look (you can see here, he hasn’t done the eyes yet)… and then he did finals for all five dancers (with a variety of animals on their heads; don’t you love the monkey?), coloured in a variety of colours. This colour stage is flat – no highlights or detail yet.
When Kieron had finished adding highlights and special touches to the Chinese fan dancers, I placed them on the relevant page, and this is how they turned out in the end…
This kind of thing just went on and on between us. It was awfully good fun. For Riley and the Curious Koala – the brand new book being released in, like three days (!) – I asked Kieron to show me a selection of koalas and this is what he sent me…
I then had to choose which one I liked the best and I must say, this was difficult! We also talked about ways we could hide the koala in the photographic scenes, because part of the allure of this story is that Riley can’t find koala, yet koala is all around him.
Kieron came up with some fabulous ways to hide koala – both literally and in an abstract fashion… can you spot him in this photo final for page 19?
As you can see, Kieron had not only the task of drawing characters for the Riley books – he also had to insert them into photos and aeroplanes, in sand and on water, in Ferris wheels and clouds… using his most clever of cleverness to do so… I really can’t understand how he achieves such illustrative achievement. He’s an achiever!
In Riley and the Curious Koala, our hero has a ball searching for Koala all over Sydney, and Kieron’s illustrations once again bring my third Riley book to life – I hope you love the story and pictures as much as we had fun working on them. The humour, colour and style is something I’m really proud of – and still have an aching giggling belly over.
Monday 15 November
Writing Out Loud Blog
AUTHOR INTERVIEW http://writingloud.blogspot.com/
Monday 15 November
The Book Chook
CRAFTING A BOOK USING PHOTOS
Monday 15 November
Handmade Canberra Blog
BOOK GIVEAWAY! Win Riley and the Curious Koala! Run!
Tuesday 16 November
Dee Scribe
MARKETING A SELF-PUBLISHED BOOK
Tuesday 16 November
Reading Upside Down
A CURIOUS LIFE
Tuesday 16 November
Australian Women Online
HOW TO SELF-PUBLISH A CHILDREN’S SERIES AND REMAIN SANE
Wednesday 17 November
Little People Books
READING TO LITTLE ONES
Wednesday 17 November
Miss Helen Writes
TRAVEL, BOOKS AND CHILDREN
Thursday 18 November
Soup Blog
STORY WRITING IDEAS
Thursday 18 November
Bernadette Kelly’s Blog
ILLUSTRATING THE RILEY SERIES
Thursday 18 November
Posie Patchwork: The Blog
EXTENDING YOUR BRAND and BOOK GIVE AWAY!
Friday 19 November
Sally Murphy’s Writing for Children Blog
APPROACHING PUBLISHERS
Saturday 20 November
Sue Whiting’s Blog
THE PROS AND CONS OF SELF-PUBLISHING
Saturday 20 November
Sheryl Gwyther’s Blog
FROM BEIJING TO CANBERRA
Saturday 20 November
Kids Book Review
LIVE QUESTION TIME WITH TANIA!
The conversation will take place all day long – just post a question and Tania will answer.
Sunday 21 November
Sandy Fussell’s Stories are Light Blog
AN INTERVIEW WITH RILEY!
Sunday 21 November
Kids Book Review
RILEY AND THE CURIOUS KOALA BOOK GIVEAWAYS!
Sunday 21 November, in the evening
Tania McCartney Blog
BOOK LAUNCH PARTY
Join Tania as she takes you through her book launch party, held at Dalton’s Bookstore in Canberra City. There will be photos, stories about the launch and lots of fun!
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