Illustration

An Interview with Swapna Haddow

Swapna Haddow has serious chops when it comes to comedic writing for children, and this time she’s moved from pigeons and bunnies, to pandas. Bad Panda hits the spot for Pearl DSilva and her two kids, as she prepared to…

Day In the Life of an Illustrator: Phoebe Morris

Join Phoebe Morris, illustrator of The Adventures of Mittens: Wellington’s Famous Purr-sonality for our Day in the Life feature. Between dodging parking wardens, agonising over crocs or topping up on coffee Phoebe gets down to the business of meeting the…

Waffle explores NZ – and Hayley explores publishing

Creating a picture book—whether it’s story or illustration or both—is a massive undertaking in its own right. Doing all that and taking the self-publishing route to bring it to fruition is a whole other quest. Hayley Elliott-Kernot takes us through…

Book Awards: the illustration finalists

This year we’re kicking off our NZCYA Awards coverage with the Russell Clark Award for Illustration finalists! We have some exclusive insights into the process of creating the illustrations for each book, including storyboards, mood boards, working sketches, hand cutting…

Why does illustration cost so much?

Fifi Colston explains the costs involved in training as an illustrator, and how many books a year she has to illustrate to make ends meet. A great resource for anyone wondering why it is illustrations can be so expensive. I…

Day In the Life of an Illustrator: Catherine Bagnall

We have a delightful installment of our Day In the Life of an Illustrator feature today—with someone more used to gallery walls than pages of a book. But being new to the world of art on the page doesn’t make…

Day In the Life of an illustrator: Flox

Even if you don’t know Flox… you know Flox. Her iconic artwork has appeared on everything from murals to umbrellas to trains – to picture books! In 2017, she illustrated Malcolm Clarke’s Tu Meke Tūī!, and it was a runaway success….

Revitalising The Boy with Two Shadows – Sarah Greig

It’s no secret that we’re big Margaret Mahy fans around these parts. Between our Mahy questionnaire, and being, well, living and breathing humans who love children’s books and live in Aotearoa, it’s kind of a foregone conclusion. An exciting Mahy-related…

Book Awards: the illustration finalists

This year’s NZCYA Awards coverage kicks off with the Russell Clark Award for Illustration Award finalists! We have some exclusive insights into the process of illustrating each book, including working sketches, storyboards, decadent interior spreads, and even a photograph of…

Kay O’Neill: Blue Skies and Happy Dragons

Have you read many comics with Deaf characters using sign language? How about queer characters and environmental themes? Kay O’Neill is a New Zealand cartoonist creating award-winning comics, and today Auckland cartoonist and illustrator Eddie Monotone interviews them for us….