Hello friends! Today is the book birthday of my 11th illustrated book, FRIED RICE SURPRISE! I’m so excited to share this book with the world! Let’s take a peak inside…
Story begins when Fern learns the Japanese word “mottainai もったいない“ from her mom. It means everything is too good to waste.
In this illustration I tried to include all of the reuse + repurpose ideas my grandma taught me. And some I do now. Can you spot the newspaper folded to make a box for the oranges? My grandma used to use the origami technique to make a temporary box like that.
I’ve talked about this spread on my instagram so many times. But here it is again. This is the spread I showed my art director. And he said YES THIS ENERGY! So the rest of the book, I really went for it. You have to read the book to see how far I pushed it. But it was so much fun. I’m glad I worked on the pages that excited me the most first so the rest of the book was about matching that energy.
I often write about how much I love drawing food. But drawing fried rice really scared me at first. I didn’t know how to draw a group of tiny grains?!
I tried a couple of different ways. I did try to draw every rice grain at one point. That didn’t go well… Everything clicked when I watched my friend make it in a wok. I really loved how the rice moved like waves. It wasn’t about accurately drawing everything. I focused on the impression of the fried rice. I hope I got the energy and movements of making fried rice right.
I wrote about how I designed Fern and her friends in last month’s blog. I love the different food they represent. And it was a great new challenge for me to draw ingredients like cumin and cashews which I would have never thought to illustrate on my own.
To celebrate the release of FRIED RICE SURPRISE! I think I’m going to go eat some fried rice :) Thank you so much for supporting this book. I hope it brings you joy and the comfort of having great friends and family <3
That’s it for this month’s post. Thank you so much for reading. See you next month <3
Always love, Shiho