• I talk to ravens. There, I admit it. We have ravens in the forest up the road where we frequently walk. When I hear them I call back to them.

    Often they come to investigate me. Over the years I’ve come to believe that they know it’s me and recognise me.

    My studio is under their flightpath from the Forest across to Wales. They call out as they pass by. I’m so attuned to their calls. (Ravens have a large vocabulary of sounds, unlike the other corvids.)

    I leap out of the studio and call back to them. Sometimes they circle round to fly over me but the more exciting response is their aerobatics.

    Sometimes, often in bright, sunny weather, they will swoop and dive and, best of all, do victory rolls, completely spinning round in the air. This is so obviously done for fun and amusement. It lifts my heart when they do it. I know, in that moment, that we are communicating just for the hell of it!

    Here’s an old video of walking in the Forest and talking to ravens.

  • A kid’s book? Really? It can’t be that hard, can it?

    Well, not if you are an AI scammer who just wants to make a video about how easy it is to make a kid’s book.

    And it is easy, if you just want to see your name on a book to add to your bucket list ot boost your ego.

    But making a book for children that they might want to read and find interesting or exciting is quite a different thing. 

    And illustrating a book does not mean just sticking the same bit of clip art on every page or asking midjourney to conjure up weird images of six fingered people. (Oh there’s an idea for a book!)

    And actually selling a book! Well that really is a quite different thing. Most self- published books sell fewer than 10 copies!

    Oh and then there are all the mental barriers we set up for ourselves…

  • Drawing heads for character illustrations doesn’t have to be difficult. A head is just a blob at the top of a body. The important bits are what you draw on top of the features that define the mood and emotion… the hats and clothes, glasses and beards that define the character.

    Creating characters is not about accurate life drawing as a serious Artist – (capital A!).

    Many characters only ever need one or two head-shapes for a whole book or series. Practice those heads and you can soon be drawing them easily. Even more complicated characters only ever need a small library of head positions, so concentrate on learning those.

    In this video I discuss heads on characters drawn by great children’s book illustrators and then show how you basic head construction and how you can learn draw your own heads quite quickly. There are amazon links to the books mentioned below. (I get an affiliate fee to help pay for my website, but you pay no more.)

    Subscribe to my channel on YouTube for lots more drawing videos  ??

    Website https://www.shoorayner.com

    music by http://www.youtube.com/cleffernotes

    Everyone asks about the tools I use. Here’s a video to show you what and how I use them. https://youtu.be/QJwjV1FKdyg

    Rotring Tikky Graphic Pen

    http://amzn.to/2hLNgQo in the UK 

    http://amzn.to/2zRyH4y in the USA  

    http://amzn.to/2E3qL08 in Canada

    00:00:00 Introduction

    00:00:23 Alice Teniel  https://amzn.to/3HkSYAS

    00:00:35 Alice Arthur Rackham. https://amzn.to/3Hnocr7

    00:01:22 The Queens Knickers. https://amzn.to/3vKQRnq

    00:01:44 The Day the Crayons Quit. https://amzn.to/4b3vi1R

    00:02:09 Supertato. https://amzn.to/3U4BgJE

    00:02:24 Going Swimming. https://amzn.to/3TZI0sl

    00:02:36 Where the wild things are. https://amzn.to/3Hm72Kx

    00:04:01 One snowy Day. https://amzn.to/4b1SM7c

    00:04:18 Little Mole  https://amzn.to/47FrdOc

    00:04:41 Greek Myths. https://amzn.to/3tXiola

    00:05:10 Tiddler. https://amzn.to/3O5KUIg

    00:05:37 Arthur  https://amzn.to/3O8wS8B

    00:05:51 Rupert Bear. https://amzn.to/48BKLEE

    00:06:30 Where the wild things are Drawing

    00:07:06 Turn faces into different characters

    00:08:18 Differentiating characteristics

    00:10:10 Different eye types

    00:11:12 Different head shapes

    00:12:47 Monster Boy

    00:13:30 Conclusions