Susan Eaddy Shares Her Illustration Process with Once Upon A Sketch

Midsouth illustrator and Regional Illustration Coordinator shares her process of illustrating with clay in the first of a two part interview over on Once Upon A Sketch.com, a blog full of tips and info for children's market artists. Go check it out!

Beyond the Grave - my cover process

Have a look at the cover for the illustrated middle grade novel, Beyond The Grave, written by Dotti Enderle and published by Magic Wagon available September 3, 2013. It's a spooky adventure novel about two boys who decide a graveyard is the perfect place to work on a particular class project. I wrote a blog about my cover process here as well as some of the interior illustrations here and here.

'Strangers in the Stable' ... my latest book illustration projet completed.

I don't post here often, because my schedule is filled with more than children's book illustration, however, my latest project was for a Christmas early reader, and now that the publisher has sent the files to the printer, now I can share.

This was my first kid's book illustrated purely digitally, so it was quite an experience. I normally only paint digitally for novels and some older kid's genres, like MG or YA (which are only sometimes illustrated).

Strangers in the Stable, by Jim Laughter and 4RV Publishing, is a charming twist to the traditional Christmas tale, which makes me doubly honored to have been the illustrator. Now, for a peek at the illos:

The stores and shops teemed with life,
and people lined up at tables in the marketsquare,
signed books, and paid money to
men in flowing red robes and shiny hats.

Finally, three more men entered from out
of the night. Kings, the people called them.
They carried gifts and laid them before the
child and his parents.

The kids got to know the young family,
and even Young Billy became friends with
Mary.

If you're interested in seeing the original cover I created for this book, and read why I changed it at literally the last minute, check out my latest 4RV newsletter post.

If your thinking on buying a few copies for Christmas, pre-orders are being accepted now on the 4RV Publishing catalog site.

Until next time,

Aidana WillowRaven

http://WillowRaven.weebly.com

Playing with Clay!

Here is an illustration in progress for the February issue of BabyBug Magazine.

I started off with a detailed sketch and I work back & forth with my client until I have the sketch exactly to their liking. We took out the shelf, added an oven, & scooped the pancakes off the floor!

Then I start to layer the clay with my millions of tools on my messy clay table

And here it is... almost done!  I can't show the whole thing until it is first published in the magazine. Can't wait to see how it looks in print!