Elena Odriozola

Elena Odriozola is a published illustrator of children's books. Some of the published credits of Elena Odriozola include The Story Blanket, Vegetable Glue (Books for Life), Cuando sale la luna.

Below are a selection of her work:



I like the way she's been using collage-like pattern to make the woman's clothes, the braches on her head shows a feeling of fantasy.





Though the character is almost emotionless, the picture is still communicating a sensation of coldness and loneliness, I like this sort of simple but impactful style of drawing.






I really do admire her style of illustrations, the tone of voice is quite peaceful, silent, but meaningful at the same time,I like this kind of beauty.And it's a sort of style that I can develop myself into.

Meng-chia,Lai

Student prize-winner

Meng-Chia Lai is interested in pursuing a diverse illustrating career, including adult and children’s illustration, editorial and character design. During her studies, Meng-Chia made four children’s books, of which OH! is the third. She is currently in discussion with French publisher, Edition Lirabelle, over its publication and that of another book Peebi Lost . For inspiration, she draws with children at her parents’ kindergarten in Taiwan. Artists who have influenced her include Picasso, Matisse and the ancient Chinese calligrapher and painter Wang Hsi-chih.

Winning Illustration: OH!

Dummy book, laser printed from original artwork in Chinese ink on Chinese paper

Meng-Chia came up with the story for OH! after swallowing an orange pip while chatting to her mother. ‘She said to me that I don’t need to buy oranges in the future! I chose ink with a touch of orange to make the book with a simple but practical message for children, "Don’t talk with your mouth full".’ - Meng-Chia Lai

"Oh!" Published by Édition Lirabelle, France 2006

Ling likes oranges. She shares it with her classmate Mei. Ling swallowed an orange pip by accident..... This is a picture book with a message- "Don't talk with your mouth full".

This book was chosen one of the five V&A Illustration Awards Student Illustrator 2005, the original paintings exhibited at the V&A Museum London.

Web:Meng-chia Lai

Meng-chia Lai loves being inspired by everyday life. Especially people, music, nature, and food. Expressing from her mind on to her art works give her the opportunities to communicate with others. It is one of the best ability to have.

The core ingredients of her work are the warmth of humanity, and imagination and inspiration from everyday life. As she works, she enjoys being the casting director, set designer and director, creating a world from her observation and imagination to communicate to people.

Image-making is a language that is understood internationally and is a unique ability given to human beings. Her strength is her ability to use images to communicate to people all over the world, bringing an emotional atmosphere to people in order to move them.

Brian Biggs

He has written and drawn comics and graphic novels, designed magazines, and illustrated for many many magazines and newspapers. In 2003 he began illustrating children's books with Shredderman. Since then he has illustrated several more books and he's currently working on even more. He continue working on editorial projects, as well as a lot of advertising, posters, and on a lot of toys and puzzles. He also work with animation, music, and various other media.

Web: Brian Biggs

Marc Boutavant

Marc Boutavant is a French graphic designer, illustrator, and author. His illustrations have been widely published in magazines, books, and album covers globally including the New York Times, Martha Stewart Kids, and the New Yorker. He was recently featured as one of world’s leading children’s illustrators in the book Play Pen: New Children’s Book Illustration.

Web: Marc Boutavant

Coloring images for children

This summer, I took an internship in Qingdao press, in the department of children's education, I helped to color the line drafts which were created by drawers.

Those three are of my favourate ones, I only did the coloring part.





There are certain rules for making illustrations for children, some of the widely accepted ones are, the characters should always look cute and friendly, with innocent gestures, big heads, delicate colors etc. They tend to use tiff format to make the coloring, and in CMYK color mode. They always adjust the color of the skin to the same color value, like C 15%, M 10%,Y 0%,k0%. I did lots of coloring and re-coloring work in three weeks time, and I learnt some techniques, also my memory of childhood has been awaken in the process of coloring. Also, I learnt that, there's a mass production running, so time is always limited, the persuation of quality is always ignored facing the huge tasks. Creativity is not very much encouraged in press, in this aspect, making our own children's books can be a good solution.

Travel Illustrations-3

These illustrations are done by Chongchong, who is from Chongqing,China,the editor of CPCW.
She's into traveling, photography, drawing and crafts.


I've shot several unique icons of toilets using camera, however,using illustrations is also a fun way.


Putting colors into images when necessary is a good method to stress the importance.


A bit exaggeration makes the image more vivid.


In my previous illustrations, I'm lacking of this sort of scene drawing, this tells a story, it is a direction that I'm going to develop myself into.






Changing the actual size of objects can make the image more interesting.


This one is really really similar to the one that I have done, which really surprised me:)

Travel Illustrations-2

Bookcover:

Title: Turkey travel illustrations
Writer: Peiyu, Zhang
A geography teacher in Zhongshan Girl's high school of Tai Wan.
Enjoys drawing while travelling, she's been to Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey,Czech, Austria and Hungary. She's been awarded one of the"Asia-Pacific creative teachers".

Pages inside:

Peiyu's drawing materials:

This book was done by Peiyu Zhang when travelling to Turkey for two months.She has documented all her travel experience and adventures of mind in this travel diary.She's got lightening, enlivening texts and elegant, amusing illustrations.

The picture books that are popular among markets are almost only with illustrations, however, this book has included texts, index,page number all hand drawn by writer herself. So this book has somehow been unique from picture book publishing.
As a travel book, it is lovely and sincere. Unlike the overall travel books with landscape photos, this one was done with elegant and careful illustrations, vivid texts and many details of the writer herself like travel maps and daily expenses. So this book is both worth appreciating and its functional as well.

Travel Illustrations

I did use text and illustrations to make record of my trips to Shanghai and Beijing this summer, it was my first time trying to document my own experience by using this combination.I haven't learnt anything about others works on travel illustrations, and I get interested in this area by doing more research.

Below are my works:








From my illustrations above, I used quite a lot of texts instead of images, which I suppose could develop more texts into visual language in the future.
I mainly drew objects and architectures, but used texts to tell stories, and I think story telling is the next step I can develop myself into.
I could make more research about others work and finally make my own book.Blurb is a good website which can help you make your own photo book:http://www.blurb.com/