Published Illustrations - ‘How do I know how I feel?’

I have recently had the pleasure of working with the talented Sian-Louise Tarn on her new book ‘How do I know how I feel?’, which is now available on Amazon on kindle and as a physical copy.

Book Cover

"How do I know how I feel?" is a beautiful guide to recognising your own feelings and understanding that your emotions are valid even when you don't understand what has caused them. With a short explanation on fight, flight and freeze, this book also aims to help children take control of and process their reactions whatever the situation.

This was my first experience with illustration but it was a very enjoyable process. It was fun bringing to life Sian’s ideas from her draft drawings she had for the book. We discussed a lot the style she was after for the illustrations and I worked on the feedback she gave to draw the designs that she was happy with.

For the drawing process, I researched reference images to base the children's poses on and then I changed the appearance of the children, making sure to include a variety of different children throughout the book. The drawings are done by hand with fine liner and marker pens. Then I photographed the images and edited them in photoshop to clean them up and adjust the contrast. 

Original drawing before it has been edited in photoshop.

After editing the drawing in photoshop to remove background and adjust contrast.

Overall I am very proud of this project and would encourage anyone with children to grab a copy of the book. Thank you again to Sian-Louise Tarn for commissioning me for your project.