Emma Latham Illustrator "Winging it!"

Emma Latham has kindly produced an amazing series of illustrations for the SSCB Story Book - "Winging it!" The book is available to pre-order & help support the charity.

Buy your signed pre-order copy of the book now.

Winging it! Children's storybook

Illustration workflow steps:

How does Emma start her illustration process? Firstly understanding the story, then lots of sketching until she can narrow down to a refined idea. For example, the opening illustration & introduction to Paul the penguin:

Illustrator sketch of Paul the penguin with fellow penguins for children's book Winging it!

Emma uses here refined sketch composition, taking into consideration where the story text & typography will later be placed in the design process. This transforms into the following:

Colour illustrated version of the original storybook sketch design

What medium does Emma work in? From lead & colour pencils to painting in watercolours & gouache Emma builds up her visual style. This is combined with digital imaging work too, often creating many elements separately before combining and arranging together in one master composition. This allows for lots of creative freedom and the ability to adapt illustrations in the design layout process of building the storybook & typography.

layout design for children's storybook Winging it!

About Emma Latham book illustrator:

Emma used to dream of becoming an artist or astronaut; although she’s settled on the former, and has never been into space, her head is still very much in the clouds. Fuelled by gallons of tea and cute dog photos from the internet, she carefully crafts illustrations depicting all the magical adventures she wishes she could have.

Her style consists of textures and found objects which are jiggled and pieced together to create atmospheric and enticing imagery. She has two main styles; the first is collage based and is tailored specifically towards the children’s book market. The characters that live within the pages of these stories are often deeply influenced by people, animals and childhood memories. The second is 3D collage where extreme light and dark are used to convey layers of themes and messages.

Her clients include; Black Rose Writing, The Canine Chronicle and The World Medical Fund. Her work has been shown at the Elephant and Castle Gallery and she has won the Association Of Illustrator’s  Best In Contemporary Illustration award on two occasions.

She currently lives in Nottingham with her room mate Harry the spider who never pays the rent.

View Emma's other work on her website www.emmalatham.com