Peep! Bookstagram reviewers

I wanted to say thank you to all the reviewers who took the time to read Peep! and review it.  

See my previous post to find links to all of them by CLICKING HERE

They are all on Instagram and love children's books.  Do look them out.

Peep Bookstagram

Peep! is now out in the world and there's a Bookstagram Tour next week if Instagram is your thing.  Huge thanks to all the bloggers and reviewers for taking part.  It takes a lot of time and effort to write and post about books, when you could be doing so many other things, so I really appreciate everyone giving their time for this. 

Here is where you can find the reviewers @ReadingWithKids @TeenyReaders @Booksb4Bedtime @Home.Read.Play @ThisBookIsBrilliant and @KidsBooksToLife who I had the pleasure of speaking to.  The chat can be found on Faye's Instagram feed by CLICKING HERE

One more day to go

Peep! is out tomorrow.  To celebrate I made this little gif of Dot.  She is patience personified.  Unlike my own dog who only stares out the window to bark at passing cars, the postman and the wind.

Peep! is published by Andersen Press and available to buy wherever you get your books.  But please support your local bookshop if you have one, or take a look in your local library.  Libraries and bookshops are the best.

The View From Here

This was my #colour_collective for this week. 

It's the view from my village woods across to the Black Isle.  I made this sketch sticking to the three colours I planned to use.  More and more I prefer to draw from life in my sketch book and only work from that image, as opposed to working from a photograph.  Sometimes I will take a photo for reference but, for me, a sketch really focuses in on what I noticed and what I liked about the scene in front of me.

When I got home I painted separations in black and coloured the image digitally.  Using a black layer for each colour means that it's hard to predict what the final image will look like.  I like the surprise of this.  I also like painting the layers because I'm not very good at it.  My brushwork isn't tidy and my hand isn't steady.  There's an element of it that I can't control and I really enjoy the results of that.

You can see below how layering them on top of one another starts to create the final image.  Colouring digitally does mean I can change things and you may notice that the big expanse of white water isn't in the separations.  That's because I painted it in the blue colour layer but removed it digitally as the image looked better without it.

I wasn't entirely happy with the result but after tweaking the colours and leaving it for a while, I much preferred it once I'd had some time away from it.  Some pictures are like that.