Children's illustrator describes techniques to eager crowd

Award-winning author and illustrator Melissa Sweet spoke to a crowd of children, parents, students, teachers and writers at Western Washington University Thursday, Feb. 25, on how she creates her work. She talked about what it's like being an illustrator and described the pressures of creating art to go with other authors' stories.

Sweet also demonstrated how she uses old books as "fodder" for painting and creating new art and described some of her illustrating tactics, such as how she never uses the color black to darken parts of paintings.

At the end of the presentation Sweet answered questions and signed books for dozens of people.

Sweet will be one of four children’s authors and illustrators at the Children’s Literature Conference held at Western Feb. 27.