Picture book cover of "Bear to the Rescue" by Romane Cristescu and Nic Gill, illustrated by Sylvia Morris. Text around it says "Bear to the Rescue Book Launch, Dec 3 4:30PM, with Dr Romane Cristescu, Nic Gill and Story Dogs. Illustrations feature a koala and some gum trees.

Brisbane Friends! Book launch party alert!🐨🐶📕🥳

Rom and I are beary excited to be launching "Bear to the Rescue" at the excellent Where The Wild Things Are Bookshop on December 3 from 4.30pm! 🐕🐨

Reserve a spot via the link👇 Hope to see you there! 📚🐕💕
wherethewildthingsare.com.au/pages/13509-...

I really enjoyed this one, despite the draft being something I tune out almost entirely 😅

🥳 Bear Party! Wish I could be there it sounds like it's going to be the most fun book launch ever!

Book cover for Bear to the Rescue. By Romane Cristescu and Nic Gill. Illustrated by Sylvia Morris. A dog wearing a coat and boots smiles out at us from a burned landscape. Two koalas look down from a tree.

Book cover for The Great Shark Egg Case Hunt. By Kasey Whitelaw, illustrated by Sylvia Morris. The text is on blue waves. Four children, with varying skin and hair colours, pop out of the waves, each doing a different beach activity. Also popping out of the waves are some weird shaped objects: shark/skate/chimaera egg cases.

Book cover for When the Stars Come Out. By Tanya Hill and Sylvia Morris. A young girl looks out her window at the twilit, starry sky. A torch to the side shines on her quilt, changing the pattern from moon and stars to suns. The curtains swish around her. She is wearing shorts and a t-shirt and has pale skin, freckles and curly brown hair.

New books in 2025 ✨ From a hero dog to baby sharks to the southern night sky: telling science stories is the best!

Plus, news: I'm moving home to Adelaide next month and I absolutely cannot wait.

#kidlit #australianillustrator #nonfictionillustrator

Quote with your night art!

#kidlit #digitalart #illustration
(from When the Stars Come Out)

They're pretty cool achievements 🥳🥳

Yay @tasbiophiliac.bsky.social for finding Bear!

Hey #kidlit illustrators!

We're beginning work on new Christmas/nighttime themed picture book. I'm looking for someone with a painterly, textured, and literary style capable conjuring magic, light, and wonder.

Please respond w/ samples + folio link.
Please no emails/DMs.

💙❤️ #artcommissions

Border collie wearing an inflatable collar, looking serious near an unopened box.

Book in a box, cover up: "Bear to the Rescue" by Romane Critescu, Nic Gill, Illustrated by Sylvia Morris.

Small black and white border collie with orange lead sits on bench next to opened box of books, eating a piece of non-toxic packaging material

Black and white sprollie licks his lips over open box of books.

BEAR TO THE RESCUE has landed! 🐨🐶📙

Stoked to get our paws on our first copies of the new book! Got the dogs to help with unboxing - mixed results.

Gromit was politely interested. Morello tried to eat the packaging, and fell off the bench. But Zorro is an old hand, and showed them how it's done!

t-e-x-t-u-r-e
But look at the lines between the bricks — where they're dark and where mid-tone, and where they are the brightest thing in the image.
Look for colours in the bricks: find the spectrum. Which colours make it glow and dance and approach self-effacingly...

#artthoughts

qrp with something watery! 🌊

Couldn't turn down a perfect opportunity to share a collage from The Great Shark Egg Case Hunt - out in October 🦈🪸

Cover for a book entitled "Bear to the Rescue" illustrated in a cheerful cartoony style, with a grey and white dog in a working jacket and boots saying "Happy Threatened Species Day", standing under a burnt out tree with a koala and her joey sitting above him looking down.

🌳🐨🌳 I'm never sure if we should say "Happy" for this particular annual event, but something we can be happy about this Threatened Species Day is that the NSW Government just announced a huge new park - the Great Koala National Park! 🌳🐨🌳

Read all about it here: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Good news for Threatened Species Day! A great big new park! 🌳🐨 🌳

Also nice to see that significant commitments have been made to support the people in the region who have relied on forestry for jobs until now — no real progress without supporting local communities 🐨 🌳💚🧍‍♂️

🐶🐾

A real party night out in the CBD is when you return to the house with more books than you left with

Drawing is like:

A peaceful forest scene. A huge, big-eyed dragonfly with intricate wings is flying in the foreground, with another following behind. In a little patch of sunlight, a girl is standing watching them. She's carrying bags and a big stick, like an explorer. Some paragraphs of text are blurred out, and there's a vertical line down the centre of the image.

Carl Sptizweg's: Der Schmetterlingjäger (The Butterfly Hunter). Two large butterflies in the foreground of a jungle scene. A man with a (far too small) butterfly net, watches on in shock. He, too, is carrying lots of bags. The overall composition is similar, but this is in portrait, where the previous was landscape.

Here, I was imagining my absolute dream project (a fully illustrated SFF poetry collection for middle grade) and adapted this Spitzweg painting to test out some techniques. #kidlitart #australianillustrator #carlspitzweg

Sketchbook: many similar little paintings of crowns and swords in greyscale.

Sketchbook: many similar little paintings of quills and parallelograms/dishes.

They were all layered up digitally, so here's the behind the scenes:

A woman in medieval headscarf, with sword, rides out of frame into the light. A heavily decorated crown falls away from her into the darkness. (Fun fact: The crown is based on Blanche of Lancaster's.) It's all greyscale, with layered watercolour and fading silhouettes. Text in yellow: The Queen.

This was all inspired by a one-off piece I had made just beforehand:

Text: The End

We are looking up the shaft of a sword at an awkward, hesitant(?) man wearing a crown and holding a flag. In the background a shovel points upwards, and an arrow down. Text in white: The King. All greyscale, watercolour, made of silhouettes and fading outlines.

Text: I wanted to fight monsters. I wanted to slay dragons.

A cauldron is bubbling. The cloaked person at the cauldron holds two vials in their hand. Text in blue: The Witch. All greyscale, watercolour, made of silhouettes and fading outlines.

Text: No one should hold life and death in one hand. But what else is a sword?

A princess sits in a shaft of light, sewing a pair of pants. In the foreground are a pair of boots. Text in blue: The Princess. All greyscale, watercolour, made of silhouettes and fading outlines.

Text: It's time to see, it's time to go, what happens that I'm not allowed to know.

A woman weeps by a pile of rocks. A spade is in her hand. In the distant background a castle looms out of the mist. Text in maroon: The Peasant. All greyscale, watercolour, made of silhouettes and fading outlines.

Text: The Gods curse us all, for the greed of the King.

A man at a desk stares down at his papers. His arms are by his side. He is wearing a livery collar. Behind him is a wall of writing, fading into fire against a night sky. Text in maroon: The Advisor. All greyscale, watercolour, made of silhouettes and fading outlines.

Text: There's death in the stars and blood on my hands, If I can't make him heed my words today.

A young boy is high up in a tree, huddling against a branch. Below him, on the ground in harsh light, a man is kneeling before a tree stump. The king, with a sword, and a crowd of men, stand behind him. All greyscale, watercolour, made of silhouettes and fading outlines. Text: The Child. The text is yellow (it was for the last illo too, sorry!)

Text: They don't see me, up here in the tree. But I saw them: the King and his men.

A man comically and dramatically trips over a tree root. Three arrows fall around him, a bow flies up above him. He is in a forest. In the background, between the trees, a unicorn rears up. Text: The Squire. All greyscale, watercolour, made of silhouettes and fading outlines.

Text: Every time, "Please Lord" I pray, "Let them not discover it's an act today."

A greyscale splotchy watercolour background. Neatly, formally handwritten i white over the top: The Troubled Kingdom, a portrait.

This is a little series I made for Folktale Week in 2022. I still love it, so now it can live here. #folktaleweek #shortstories

QRP with your skull art!

Book cover for a book called "Bear to the Rescue" by Romane Cristescu and Nic Gill, Illustrated by Sylvia Morris. Book cover shows watercolour image of a smiling, blue-eyed, grey and white dog wearing a blue jacket and black and red protective boots, standing in front of a burnt out etree with a koala and her joey sheltering in the uppermost branches. The background air is a pinkish colour, and there are dead yellow leaves scattered on the ground, but the overall impression is one of hope.

🚨Arooga arooga! 🚨

Excited to share the cover of my very first picture book: "Bear to the Rescue"! 🐨🐶📘🔥

Co-written with Romane Cristescu, and illustrated bySylvia Morris, our book tells the true story of Bear as he goes from being a bit "too much" to saving koalas after the 2020 mega fires 🔥