The Song of Lewis Carmichael

This book is a middle-grade adventure story about a boy who travels to the North Pole on a hot air ballon accompanied by a talking bird.

When I read it  I was very keen to be the illustrator. I haven't illustrated with just a  pencil in sometime, I'd forgotten how great a way it is to work. There's nothing better than emerging yourself in a world and drawing what you see with a 2b pencil and paper- or in my case a Cintiq screen.

  I wanted the drawings to be figurative, to show realistic animals but also capture their character. It can be tricky to do, the polar bears eyes are more expressive than in reality but hopefully it's believable. The drawings are only my interpretation of  the story.  There's lots of room for the reader to image more and see what is beyond each page? 

Illustrated books have three creators- the writer, the illustrator and the reader. Perhaps you will draw your own experiences of reading this mesmerising book. I think you'll have a lot of fun!

It took me eight weeks to complete all the drawings in the book, from memory I did two or three each day.That's quite fast for me. I do love the immediately of pencil lines. Colouring in looks great, but it takes so long!