Julie Olson Books - Author/Illustrator

Recent Publication Hits Market

A board book I illustrated for a subsidiary of Lerner Publications is now available. It's called, "The Opposites of My Jewish Year." You can go to my site to purchase it www.jujubeeillustrations.com/books.html. Obviously it has a very select market...Jewish. It takes the Jewish holidays throughout the year and teaches opposites using objects associated with each. Hannukah, for example, uses the menorah to teach high and low (the middle candle is high..the shamash...and the other candles are low). Not being Jewish myself, I was grateful for the internet and the definitions of Jewish words and holidays I found there as I researched the illustrations.

Dog Walkers Finished

So, if you'll look in my previous posts, you'll see a sketch of a boy "walking" some dogs. Well I finally got around to painting the piece. Here's how it turned out. Notice I only outline the main focus figures in black line. For the other parts, I just leave the sketch line showing through.

Star Wars Episode III and other matters

Well, it's been a while since I posted, but a lot has been going on. We're in the process of selling our house and getting it ready was a bit of a chore. But my parents came to visit and I took my dad to see Star Wars Episode III on opening day (5-19-2005). It was the 11 am showing so we avoided the real lines of the previous midnight showing. We thought we'd be avoiding the costumers too but this sketch proves otherwise. They were trying to be Padme and Anikin...they were anything but. I found it humorous.

Out on the town

My husband and I drove over to Ann Arbor last night to hear a group called Opus21 perform at the Kerrytown Concert House. The group consists of a violinist, a saxophonist, a clarinetist, a bassist, a pianist and 3 percussionists (see their site for more info...www.opus21.org). It was an interesting group and an interesting concert. The concert house itself provides quite the intimate setting with chairs for only 80-100 people in an L shape room with the performers at the bend in the L. The musicians were amazingly talented; however, 5 out of the 10 pieces commissioned for the group and premiered last night were not so spectacular. They were quite modernistic and some even hard on the ears. The other 5 were quite enjoyable though. My husband and I were impressed with the talent of Judy Moonert, principle percussionist in the Kalamazoo Symphony orchestra, on the vibrophone...but funny enough, we also thought she'd be the perfect person for Mr. Rogers to visit on his show to talk about percussion. She just had the look. Here's a sketch I did of her with a Bic pen on the back of the program.

You never know when you'll need a character for a book. So look for the interesting people around you when you go out. I only wish I had more programs to sketch on because you should've seen some of the "high brow" attendees. Although, we did enjoy the post-concert cheese and veggie platters and mineral water along with the best of them.

Do you have any animals?

One of the first things I learned when I went to take my portfolio around NYC was that I needed to have depictions of animals in my portfolio; Every art director said so. Reason being, when you use animals, you don't have to deal with the race issue...you don't offend any person by not representing them or by representing them in a "stereotypical" scenerio. Plus, kids love animals. Pigs are a favorite for some reason. Here's one of my pigs...and yes, I'm being stereotypical seeing as the pig is "pigging out." But I don't think I'll get any threats from the Pigs Union about it.

And here's a sketch I just did breaking stereotypes...have you ever heard of an elephant ballerina? (then of course the background characters are being the stereotypical teasing kids you encounter if you're doing something you don't seem fit for).

So, bottom line. Include some animals. (I think I need a few more...off to work)

Sketching, Sketching

So, what does an illustrator do? The answer is sketch, sketch, sketch, sketch, sketch. I wish I had more time to do more of it. Whether you work on the computer or on paper or on canvas, the initial stages of an illustration start out with sketches. I usually start out with thumbnail sketches (tiny 2x3 inch drawings) to work out the composition. I ALWAYS do this for a book. But then my method sometimes varies from there in the larger sketch stage. Often, I like to sketch out different ideas for foreground and background and then merge the two in Photoshop. Here's an example of something I'm working on.

The boy and dogs were drawn separately from the background. That way, if I get a main focal point (the boy and the dogs here) the way I want them, I don't have to draw around them and worry about messing them up. I simply put a piece of paper over the main subject (thin enough to see through) and start drawing background ideas. Once I've got one I like, I scan both foreground and background into the computer and merge them. From there I can tweak sizes, proportions, perspectives...all sorts of things. After cleaning it up a bit, I print out the sketch on watercolor paper on my Epson 2200 and then paint. And if I mess up, I just print out a new one.