Book Illustrations: Drawing Upon the Words

This past week was spent working furiously away on black and white pen and ink illustrations for Llewellyns 2012 Magical Almanac. As you know, I finally got my glasses, so it's been a month of waiting and then catching up. I've been writing articles for the almanac since 2005, and in 2007 I started contributing illustrations as well. (These photos are all my illustrations from Magical Almanacs past.) I look forward to the almanac every year, I love the articles and it's also a great guide to have at your fingertips for daily energies.

This year I illustrated two articles that I wrote for the Magical Almanac, one on working with Green Man for prosperity and abundance magic, and the other was on dream magic. I think you'll enjoy them both. I was also pleased to do illustrations for articles by Raven Digitalis and Blake Octavian Blair, both are Facebook friends and very talented writers. I never know who I'm going to get besides myself to illustrate, so it's always fun to find out! It's actually a fun challenge to read the articles and see what images come into my mind, or figure out what the best way is to convey the ideas of the written word into images. I've always gotten great ideas from books, so it's really fun to have the opportunity to illustrate. I look for inspiration in the article and come up with images that will both pull the reader in, as well as wanting to please the writer and make them say, "Yeah! That's what I was thinking of." So next July when it comes out, we'll see how I did! I can't wait for you to see them!

I have one illustration left for Voice of the Trees, and then I'm shipping those off to my editor on Monday. I'm pleased with how those came out, lots of leaves and Celtic knots and stuff. I've recently noticed that some of the Llewellyn books are using black and white pencil illustrations instead of ink for their books, Lisa Hunt and Jennifer Meyer have recently created beautiful pencil illustrations for Llewellyn books, and I love the look. So for Voice of the Trees, I opted for pencil illustrations. I actually submitted a few with the finished manuscript and card illustrations so that they could see where I was going with them, and my editor liked them so much, she asked for more! I was delighted!

One more tidbit, I was recently asked to illustrate another book pretty soon for Llewellyn, I can't tell you what the book is yet, at least not until I sign the contract, but I will say I've seen the reference photos the author sent in, and wow! This is going to be a gorgeous book and I'm really excited to be a part of it! More on that in the future!
Well, back to the drawing board for me!