Cook Me A Story

A few months ago I had the pleasure to work on this little great book called Cook Me A Story: a treasury of stories and recipes inspired by your favourite fairy tales, written by Bryan Kozlowski and published by Walter Foster Publishing.

As the title suggests, the book is "a treasury book where the most beloved fairy tales are retold with deliciously clever recipes for families to create and enjoy together."

I REALLY enjoyed making the illustrations for this book. 

Fairy tales and is the best combination ever!

Here some images for the internal pages. But the book has MANY more...

I will post some real life book pictures as soon as I get my copies. 

Stay tuned! 

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!

Eve and Elly

Teasing Thursday! 

In a month time, Eve and Elly will be in Australian bookstores. 
A sweet story about the friendship between a girl and her stuffed animal. 
Written by Mike Dumbleton, published by Random House and illustrated by me.

Can't wait!! :)

Echidna Jim Desktop Wallpaper

It's still Echidna Jim publication week, so in order to celebrate I've decided to create a Echidna Jim desktop wallpaper to share with the world! 

Now you will be able to have little Echidna Jim cheering you up during your working day :) 

To download your copy of the desktop, please right click on the version you’d like and select "Save As". Easy peasy! 

2560 x 1440
1920 x 1080
1600 x 1000

Also, if you are interested in the making of Echidna Jim, please stay tuned. Soon a blog post about the behind the scenes... ;) 

New book! Echidna Jim went for a swim

Earlier last year I had the great pleasure of working for the second time with Scholastic Australia. Awww, what an amazing publisher! The books they make are just superb. 

This time I worked on a very fun title called Echidna Jim Went For A Swim, written by Phil Cummings. 

The story is about a prickly Echidna and his friends on their way to the seaside. 
I've found a nice review on the Australian website Reading Time that explains very well the essence of the story: 

"This is a story about cooperation, problem solving and accommodating those who are different to us. Echidna Jim is spikey – physically and in his lack of social awareness. By the expression on his charmingly characterised face the reader guesses that he doesn’t know how to act and feels out of place. When he pushes through a crowd he hurts his pals and when he jumps into the sea he accidentally bursts their buoyancy aids."

Here some a few preview spreads from the book. 

The book is coming out in Australian bookshops today, 1st February 2016!
But if you don't live anywhere near there, you can always get it online here, here or here. 
Get a copy and let me know how you like it :)

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!

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.

Three Bears and Goldilocks

Finally it's here!!

The app Blue Quoll team and I worked in the past year it's finally available to download on the iTunes store!! 

It's called THREE BEARS AND GOLDILOCKS and it's an interactive storyapp that tells a modern and fun reinterpretation of the popular tale of Goldilocks.

Blue Quoll team worked hard to create a fun and entertaining app that is also child-safe and easy to use. 
This is a top notch product that reveals quality digital storytelling at its best!!

So if you have a little person in the house, make her/him happy downloading this little digital gem. 

CLICK HERE to go to the iTunes store and buy the app!

If you want a little sneak peek, here's the trailer of the app

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!

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!