I’m really happy to share a project that I worked on last year with Laurence King Publishing.L

I’m really happy to share a project that I worked on last year with Laurence King Publishing.

Little Guides to Great Lives is a series of children’s books by Isabel Thomas, celebrating the lives of amazing and influential people through history, including Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie, Frida Khalo and Amelia Earhart

I was delighted to be asked to illustrate Nelson Mandela’s story, starting at his childhood and throughout all the challenges he faced and over came in his life. It was an education for me also to learn so much more about his revolutionary anti-apartheid campaigning, including his political imprisonment to becoming the president of South Africa. I think it’s an important read for all children and adults alike.

Initially, Laurence King approached me through my agents, Jelly London, to create some sample spreads for the book, including selection of the 3 spot colours in which it would eventually be printed.

For one of the colours I chose to use an almost aqua green (Pantone 2239U in case you are interested) that isn’t so easily replicated in CMYK to make the most of the opportunity to use Pantones! 

Once the whole book was given the go ahead, the project was broken up in manageable chunks. The whole thing includes 64 illustrations that needed to be researched for historical accuracy, the correct clothing, vehicles etc. This all took time and Katherine from Laurence King was really great at providing reference material (thank you!) 

The next stage was to create pencil sketches within the layout of the book. I had some fun opportunities to play with the placing of the text within the illustrations so each page is interesting. 

I later worked up these pencil sketches in Photoshop, keeping in mind the colour separations for the spot printing. This was a challenge! Working with only 3 colours meant I had to experiment and mix using different transparencies for each one to make new colours. We eventually added a Black to the set which made everything a lot easier! Grateful to the design team at LK for being so easy to work with and for taking on my many many layered files! 

Above are some of my favourite spreads along with some sketches. If you’d like to buy the book and indeed the others in the set, visit your local book seller or the usual online outlets.

And of course, from Laurence King directly!