This month shows the release of the middle grade reading book “Flower Girl”. This is my second fab collaboration with Welsh author and newsreader Lucy Owen ( see “The SeaHouse” in my blog here )
“Flower Girl” is a beautiful story of a girl called Cherry. Her mother wants a child more than anything else in the world and her wishes come true when Cherry is formed out of the blossom petals of her cherry tree.
With soft pink curls and her butterfly friend that lives in her hair, she’s a little different to everyone else. At school Cherry tries to fit in, but that’s when things start to go wrong.
Lucy sent me this magical story 2 years ago to read over. It conjured images in my head there and then, and before we even had a publisher, I began painting the main character ‘Cherry’ straight away. I just had to capture on paper what was whizzing around in my head.
That painting became the image that was used on the front cover.
The Welsh publisher, Atebol agreed to publish the book in Spring 2021 and confirmed that I would make the illustrations. Lucy and I were over the moon. They were so brilliant to work with and Rachel the Editor had a fantastic eye for detail so we really feel like we’ve put our ‘all’ into the book.
Because of the printing involved with this type of reading book, the illustrations inside have to be black and white. I love working this way and black and white can create lovely atmospheric pieces. I used charcoal powder and graphite pencil to make an illustration for each chapter. Then I designed extra pieces that would decorate the title page and ends of chapters. Here are some of them below. . . .
Cherry being formed from Blossom petals
We hope that you will love reading this modern day fairytale as much as we loved creating it.
Flower Girl can be purchased here