It's out!

It's out!!!
As promised a while ago, Eve and Elly is finally available in bookstores in Australia. 
Woooooo! Very exciting!!

However, if you're not lucky enough to live amongst kangaroos, then you can always buy the book by clicking on this link.

To celebrate this special occasion, here some "behind the scenes" treats for you, picture books lovers. 

These are some of the preliminary sketches I've done for the main characters... a very early version of Eve and Elly, some of them quite different from the final one!
I always find sketches a lot more interesting than the polished, finished version. 

Some covers ideas 

Also, here a sneak peek of the storyboard as well! I love to see how rough however how similar the final spreads look to the finals!

Coming soon!

I've been quite busy working on different projects in the last few months. 
A couple of those are two books coming out later this year. 

I can't really show much at this point but I can definitely show the covers.

The first project is a lovely story called Lucy in the city, written by Julie Dillemuth and soon to be published by Magination Press in May 2015.

I'm really excited about Lucy, she's a very cute raccoon who gets lost in the city and needs to find her way back home.

It's a story that aims to teach spatial thinking to kids, so expect maps, streets and building, directions and some peanut butter too ;)

The second book is called The Big Sad Wolf & The Mean Little Pigs as told by Humphrey Bookwork (yes, quite a long title!). 

The story is a very humorous take on The Three Little Pigs, told by the wolf's perspective. Also, this time the little pigs are going to take a little bit of revenge on the poor wolf! 

The story's narrator is Humphrey, a cute little bookworm that likes to eat books and tell stories to his best friend Max. 

Written by Anna Clothier, the book will be published later this year by North Parade Publishing. So stay tuned for that!

If An Elephant...

Happy New Year!! 

This is my first post of 2015 and in my resolutions list there's definitely something about posting on this blog more often. 

To start off the year in style, I want to share this great news: I'm currently working on the follow up book of Armadillo (do you remember it? Here's the link to it) called If An Elephant Went To School. 

I'm very excited and flattered to be able to work again with Scarletta Press and Ellen Fisher. 

Can't wait to see this other little gem coming to light!! Stay tuned... :D

GIVEAWAY time!

Hello there!

I haven't been updating this blog much lately. Truth is I've been busy with stuff I can't show around yet, so bear with me and I promise I will post some new work very soon!

In the meantime, I've finally received the copies of the book I've illustrated last year for Scarletta Press called If An Armadillo Went To A Restaurant. 
I must say I'm sooooo pleased with how it turned out in the end!!
I can definitely say this is my best published work so far, very proud about it! :D

To celebrate the event, I've decided to host a giveaway. I will extract two lucky winners who will get one copy of the book each. 

In order to enter, you will have to go thru 2 little steps:
-go to my facebook page and share the post about the giveaway. Here's the link http://on.fb.me/1pzfxBQ

-join the mailing list on my website, leaving name and email address (important! otherwise I won’t be able to contact you in case you win), here’s the link http://www.laurawoodillustration.com/CONTACT-ME

Easy peasy! 
You have time until Friday 25th July. 
Good luck!!

My books!

I've finally added a section in my blog where you can buy my books!!!

Have a look just right here on the right bar ----------------------------------->
Easy peasy!!

Happy shopping!

Garlic, Hankies and Hugs

It's OUT!!

Last year I had the pleasure to illustrate Garlic, Hankies and Hugs, a text by Michelle C. Monaghan about a cute Greek granny that is a bit out of the ordinary. 

The story wants to encourage kids to be proud of their culture, and includes lovely quirky snippets about Greek culture.

A lovely picture book about peculiar nannies and pinched cheeks. 

The books is published by Jojo publishing, a Melbourne based book publisher, and now available to purchase. 

Click here if you fancy a copy!

New beginnings + Giveaway!

A new year has finally started and I reckon there's no better way to begin than hosting my first ever giveaway!! 

It has been a long time since I wanted to 

The prize is a copy of my brand new book Zillie the circus freak, recently published in Australia by Jojo Publishing. 

To enter, just leave a comment down here.
No matter where you live, I will send anywhere in the world!

This giveaway will run for a week, the winner will be reveal on Thursday 9th January. 
Good luck and happy New Year everybody!!

Zillie the circus freak

I'm happy to announce my first young adult book is now published!

Zillie the circus freak is a sweet and funny novel about a very clumsy girl who lives in a circus. Her family is very peculiar and unique and because of this she struggles to fit in her school. 

The book is written by Alley Bucci and published by Jojo publishing. 

It was great working on this book. It was my first time dealing with an older character and black and white illustrations but I really enjoyed both of those things.

To create the internal black and white spots, I used a mix of pencils and watercolour washes, something a bit different from my usual process. 

This was definitely a big learning curve for me and I really hope to do more of this kind of work in the future.

If an armadillo...

Sneak peek!

This is the cover of a book I'm working on at the moment. It's going to be published by Scarletta Press in June 2014 and is going to be awesome!!
Now available for pre-orders here

The secret garden

Yesterday I received a little parcel from my lovely agent and inside there was my copy of A Treasury of Classic Stories recently published by Parragon.

How exciting!! It's always rewarding to see your work in print.
As promised in one of my previous post, here the photos of the actual book.

Maybe it's impossible to see in photo, but the hardcover is made with an awesome cotton material and it has little gold pieces here and there to make it even more precious. It's truly gorgeous!!

I did book right after finishing my Diploma of Illustration, between December and February last year. During that time, I spent a month in Italy with my family and took the work with me.
I love the fact illustrators can work just about anywhere!

If you fancy a copy, click here!

The book

And here are the images of the real book!!
I'm very happy how it turned out printed, the colours are so faithful to the original artworks!
Isn't it cute??

Here's the link if you might decide to give this as a present this Christmas to some little people of yours...!

My first ever publishing job

Finally, after exactly 12 months of waiting, the first even publishing job I worked on has been released. 
YESSS!!
It's called Twas the night before Christmas, published by Ladybird in a board book format with sound. 

I still remember when I got the news from my agency, Good Illustration agency. 
They found me this job right after signing with them (I can't remember exactly but probably the same week!) and of course I was thrilled but also a bit scared and anxious at the same time. 
Gosh, my first publishing gig!

I was still studying at the time, finishing off the last term of my illustration diploma.
Luckily, everything went really smooth, the Ladybird people were really nice to work with, they gave me lots of tips and suggestions to make the artworks better. 

Here it is some of the original art I created for the book (only my favs!)
I will be able to share the actual book pics with text when I get my copies... hopefully soon!

And here it is the link to the Ladybird book page where you can buy the book! 

I must say, seeing this illustrations after one year, I feel like I would do some things differently. Hopefully this is a sign I've matured and learned some things along the way.
But generally speaking, I am pretty happy how they turned out. I still think I did a pretty funny and jolly Santa Claus!:)

And since I like to see other people's processes, I decided to add also some rough sketches I did during some early version of it. It's interesting to see how the layout in some has really changed!

The Secret Garden

Today I'm VERY excited.

The work I've done a while ago for Parragon Books has FINALLY been published!!!
This is officially the very first project of mine that have been published in a book format. You can understand way I'm a bit ecstatic. 

The book is called Treasury of Classic Stories and it's a collection of  readapted children's classics.
The story they assigned me it's The Secret Garden and I cannot tell how happy I was because of this! I knew I would have drawn lots of plants and animals.... bliss! 
Here some samples with no text and the cover. 

I don't know who the other illustrators of the project are yet, I only know the very talented Sophie Burrows is in it! You can see a sample of one of her spreads here. Her Oliver Twist illustrations are marvellous!! 

I haven't received my free copies yet (maybe because I'm on the other side of the world? Living in Australia has its downsides...) but as soon they get here I'm going to show a bit more of the project. 
Stay tuned!

Books!

This week has been like Christmas for me... I bought so many new books!
I went to a book warehouse sale and I just couldn't resist! I managed to get some of my favourites which include Stuck and The worst Princess.
Also, today I went to the book launch of my new friend Serena Geddes and I bought her gorgeous brand new book Gracie and Josh. 
Can't wait to read them all!

Happy reading everyone!

Two years, Christmas and another era!

I've finally found the time to write another blog post, probably the last of the year.
So many things have happened recently that I didn't had the time to celebrate properly. For example:

- This blog had his second birthday. I planned to have a give away for it but I'm overseas at the moment  so I decided to postpone this in 2013. Stay tuned!

- I finished my very first book. DOUBLE YAY! I can't post sneak peeks yet since I need to wait for it to be published. It's going to be a long wait since it won't happen till the end of next year. It's probably a newbie feeling but I can't wait to speak about it!!!

- I did my second mail promo. I promise I'll post about that when I come back from these holidays.
Now that I'm not a student anymore and I'm on my own I really need to do kick ass promotion!!

- I've become a sub-committee member of Illustrators Australia so this means I'll get to see what happens behind the scenes. I'm very exciting about this one since I've always been interested in being more involved with the illustrator community.

- At the moment I'm working on my second book. I'm soooo really excited about this one, I really like to story and so far it has been really fun to draw. These below are some sneak peeks of some roughs. As you can see there's a girl involved and lots of nature... bliss!!

It's all for now. I hope everyone will enjoy the end of the year holidays. See you in 2013!

Breakfast at Tiffany's

This is a book cover I've completed not long ago.
It was a school project and I really enjoyed doing it. I also got the change to finally read the book and I really liked it. I think I would like to do more book covers in the future...

Peggy

Happy start of spring everyone!

Last Saturday I went to The Little Bookroom for the launch of "Peggy", the new picture book of the lovely Anna Walker.
There were lots of people attending the launch and Anna read the book for us.
Obviously, I bought a copy for myself and got it signed! Yay!
Here are some photos.