An artist I much admire is the late Jim Flora (1919-1998) , besides illustrating childrens books and magazines, he also did terrific album covers (jazz and classical) for RCA and Columbia. Check out his work, it's great fun. Here I've picked one of his album covers (his colour palette was always limited which added punchiness to the work), not because I think its his best but because the colour palette inspired me to limit mine to a similar range for my picture book, BIG RED BARN. It's a simple counting book, where the farmer enters his barn to attend to his animals, when it gets to 10 Geese Honking he opens the big barn doors and all the animals come charging out. Had this with an agent for over a year, but she couldn't place it and in fact gave up on the picture book market ('too tough right now') to concentrate on teenage publishing. Another agent I contacted also echoed the tough conditions and said she wasn't taking anything on but I still hope to get it published, or maybe self published one day...who knows !
