The Art of Margaret Early

I have two treasured children's books, retold and illustrated by Australian artist, Margaret Early.

The titles are Robin Hood and The Sleeping Beauty.  Margaret does exquisite work.  Each painting is a gem. Her other books in this series include William Tell and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

All these beautiful books were published by Walter McVitty Books in Australia.  The production is excellent.

Unfortunately, I do believe these books are now out of print so I'll be hanging on to my copies to enjoy with the grandchildren.

Robin Hood

Robin Hood

Robin Hood

The Sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Beauty

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.

A Favourite Book

I used to love reading this book to my kids when they were little.  They loved it too.

The Fisherman and His Wife is a classic tale and has been illustrated by many artists over the years.  The version I have was illustrated by Mark Southgate in 1987.  It was published by Andersen Press Ltd, London.

Here are some of the quirky pictures from this book. It is still a great favourite.

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.