Looking into designing book covers I created a few mock ups of classic children’ chapter books and ideas I thought could work as middle grade books.

Girl friendship, boys in trouble, animal adventure and teen mystery are featured as potential ideas.

A collection of pieces I made in 2022-23. Some are prompts from my lovely agents at Tugeau2, some are just for fun.

A year long project, this project for Harper Collins had quite the unique structure. Like a Hanukkah Menorah, once you open the book you will discover 9 little booklets arranged as menorah candles, each book telling the story of lovely little Lena and her family’s nightly Hanukkah activities. From playing with friends and cousins, cooking and neighborhood walks, the book introduces us to the joys of Hanukkah. Done digitally in narrow dimensions to fit as candles in a menorah, you can see a selection of the various activities on the left.

A cute little book with many flips and flaps.
These little guys were really fun to work on, especially the fox, the cats, and the recurring spunky chipmunks. In every scene, a foldout page reveals additional content. This was my first time experience with Large tabs and peek-a-boo cutouts.

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Zigzaging Zack is a short rebus story for a kids magazine.

Clubhouse Jr Magazine hired me to do the main illustration and also the iconography for a rebus story (that uses pictures instead of some words) about Zack the musical Zebu who plays the Zither, and his friends. This was a fun project that gave me freedom to draw what I love most – silly animals and their shenanigans!

I collaborated with Castro Fashion on their Fall 2016 girl collection

Castro provided me with the colors and the direction and I added my touch for the girl and baby girl collection, creating a mix and match style of floral, birds and geometric prints. Products included skirts Shirts Leggings and pants among other items. My label was added to indicate a specialty product.

For my second collaboration with Mudpuppy we worked on animals of the world 4 animal puzzles in a box

Unlike the previous Mudpuppy collaboration which was more simplistic in its approach, these puzzles are showing a bit more of a scene and some neighboring animals that are relevant to each animal.

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Style experiments which were never used. Still like ‘em though.

In spring 2015 I attended Surtex – the Surface design trade show – along with my agency Astound at their booth.

I knew I would meet potential clients and fellow artists and wanted to create some printed materials that would capture the essence of what I do. Earlier this year I created a curly and messy haired character to use as an avatar for all my social media accounts. I decided to use her again but enhance her with as many characters and doodles I had in stock, creating a fun, happy, quirky and colorful atmosphere that would give an idea of my style. To the left are my flyer, business cards, letterhead and postcards.

Baby’s Big World is a series of books for very young children, explaining big concepts in simple words and images. it consists of a few books, 5 of which I illustrated: Mindfulness, Yoga, Music, US Government and Chemistry.

For me it was one of the first child character centered books, as previously most of my books were mainly animal centered. For this series I created a baby/toddler character that was translated to different races and genders. Some concepts, like signing the declaration of independence, or drawing a full orchestra of babies, were more complex than others, but I think the result is happy, colorful and fun to look through..

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Help Me Wake Up Sleepy Sloth was designed as an interactive book. But interactive in the sense that the child needs to interact with the animals in the book: sing, dance, twirl and hug the book, etc.
This was a fun project and a cute story about a sloth having a hard time waking up and its froggie friend trying to wake him up.

I was so happy and thankful to be selected to illustrate for Hachette’s new baby imprint Pat-a-cake.

The “clap hands” book series consists of a touch and feel animal centered books, each focusing on one species. In addition to the touch and feel each book has a cool folding page with lots of other animals of the same species for the child to recognize and match. The series is out now with the four first books – puppies, kittens, monkeys, dinosaurs, bunnies and chicks – live on Amazon UK. Mummies and Babies and excitingly, unicorns! will join them soon.

Eyes and Ears is a mix and match book that includes 22 animal faces

All faces are cut in the middle so you create new and amusing creatures such as the Pandeetah – the rarely seen Panda cheetah. Silver Dolphin Books, the publisher, gave me full freedom and the main challenge was to try and match head sizes and proportions for the all various creatures. The book is scheduled to be out in stores in July 2016 and is available for pre-order on Amazon.

When Astound, my agency, wanted their artists to make some art featuring their logo I knew I wanted to try something new.

I normally work digitally but for this piece I created all the shapes from old newspapers and later added color and detail in Photoshop. I hope to have a chance to create more in this style and improve my collage techniques in the near future.

MATS – Illustrating Children Books

In 2017 I took an illustrating children books class by Make Art That Sells – an online course format I took before and really liked.

The class took 5 weeks and touched on every aspect of children books illustration, from creation to publishing. Each person had 3 manuscripts to choose from and illustrate during the 5 weeks. My story was about a lost bird that with some assistance finds a way home. Each week we got an assignment, mimicking the gradual process of real book creation – first focusing on the character, then the environment and a sample spread, and finally the cover. So on the left from top to bottom you can see:

1. Initial character sketch
2. Revised character and secondary character showing various expressions
3. Revised character in different poses
4. Environment/spread
5. Cover and typography mock up

In the spring of 2016 I had the pleasure of working with Mudpuppy On two kids puzzles

Based on a design for a Mix and Match book I did that year I created a few animal faces puzzles for the very young, along with jungle animal touch and feel puzzles. it was a really fun project and my first game design. The products came out looking so lovely and are now available on the Mudpuppy site

I didn’t have much experience in drawing maps, so a project of world animals atlas seemed very intriguing to me.

Shown here are the first stages of the book: the cover, featuring some of the world’s animals and a boy traveler and the European continent with it’s animals. On the left side of the European spread there’s room for some facts about some of the animals.