Art Journal » MWF

zooming off to…

elise — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 06:45:14 +0000

Off to Ipswich tomorrow morning! I’ll be there with a host of other fine illustrators and authors for the Literature Festival which lasts for a week and a day. Or two. It will be fun, a lot of drawing and painting and (judging by the weather lately) possibly swimming! I’m expecting weather-shock.

Today was another fine day of drawing fun with the kids at ArtPlay on the Yarra River in Melbourne. We drew pirates. What else would you want to do with your time? That’s the end of the Melbourne Writer’s Festival and Children’s Book Week for me. A busy time of the year

new books

elise — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:43:11 +0000

Back to work finally. Remarkably, I have a couple of days with nothing marked in my diary so it’s back to normal illustration! Woohoo! I have a few projects to catch up on that were booked in ages ago and need some tlc.

Recent things.

1. I got some advance copies… so I took some pretty pictures.

The second Sarindi book “Sarindi and the Lucky Buddha” by Janine Fraser.

2. And “The Poison Throne” by Celine Kiernan – the first cover in the triptych. Ooo it looks good!

3. There were some Writers Festival fun things too… the Text party at the Blue Diamond in the city (very cool, lovely people and amazing view), the Festival Party on Saturday night, with a dinner to come. It’s been really good to meet people, celebrate writing and think about ideas for next year.

4. And the CBCA Book Week launch event at the Abbotsford Convent. I love these events as I get to play with paint and talk to people. I like that

Hello to all the people I met! Here are some pictures taken just on home-time.

I only got time to start the tiger… can’t wait to keep going.

short course & MWF

elise — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:32:58 +0000

Wednesday night was the last night of my writing for children Short Course at RMIT. I have to say it was such a pleasure to teach – I had a wonderful class of people with varied imaginations and ideas. And they’d better keep me in the loop! I don’t doubt that there will be some books coming from these people. Next year I hope to run two of these classes, one each semester. It would be good to play with the formula a little though. It is a six week intensive course that really crams an awful lot into the time, as you’d hope. One of the difficulties for the students is to find adequate time to work on story drafts in between the classes. What I’d like – and I’d value your input – is to have a break after week 4 and come back a month later for the final two classes. I may also make it so that the focus is entirely on picture books with week 5 being solely devoted to workshopping, and the final class all about presenting to publishers. I think it could work well.

It’s been a busy week actually. There were school visits to Ardeer Sth Primary on Monday and Tuesday - hi kids! You were brilliant!! And yesterday I did an 8 min talk representing the ASA at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival. As you’d imagine it was all over very fast… it was part of a whole day of info about the business of being a writer.

I have another MWF session next weekend at ArtPlay, a wonderful business located below Fed Square along the banks of the Yarra River.

Kid’s Art Workshop – WordPlay @ ArtPlay

For more info and to book… click here

On Saturday 29th

At 12, 1:15 & 2:30pm