Some Black and White Illustrations

I've been looking through a lot of my older work of late, scanning and sorting. 

The works below are from a title published way back last century, in 1974.
The title of the book is Tell Me A Tale, stories retold and copyrighted by Jean Chapman and illustrations copyrighted by Deborah and Kilmeny Niland.

It's weird looking at your ownl work again after such a long time.  It was gratifying to see that the originals are so much finer and delicate as compared with the printed version.  As an illustrator you tend to forget that the printed work can be quite dissimilar to the original art.

Printing methods today are so much better which means good quality is more easily achievable in book production.

Jean Chapman

I was very sorry to hear of the loss of Jean Chapman recently.  She was an author who wrote specifically for young people and made a long lasting impact and contribution to the world of children's literature.
She was a lovely person with a lively humorous spirit.

My sister Kilmeny and I were fortunate to have illustrated many of her stories over the years.
Jean compiled various collections of folk tales, poems, activities and songs, retold in her easy going style with close attention to detail.

Her works have been consistently popular, and although the collections I mentioned are now out of print, they are well represented in libraries around Australia.

The illustrations below are from the book, Tell Me Another Tale, a collection written and compiled by Jean Chapman, and first published in 1976.  Kilmeny and I had a great time creating some imaginative illustrations inspired by Jean's writings.

Jean will be sadly missed.

 

 

All illustrations are by Deborah and Kilmeny Niland.

So many cats...

My book illustrations often feature cats of all kinds. Fat, happy, athletic or devious. Some of these drawings date back to 1979 when I illustrated Jean Chapman's fabulous collection of all things catty in an anthology called Velvet Paws & Whiskers.