All Of You: A Book About Colour, Composition and Self-Acceptance

All Of You is a children's book about self-discovery and colour theory, illustrated in the traditional Polish paper cutting art form of “Wycinanki”. I wanted to explore colour theory as a supporting narrative element to the book's storytelling about reframing how we perceive all the individual parts that make up who you are.

Publishing date TBD in 2025

For this project I used an Apple iPad and Apple Pencil with Procreate and coloured paper collage. It’s really important to me that before getting started on digital illustration, that I play with the traditional tools first and explore their potential before diving into their digital forms. Using traditional tools is really helpful for our brains to think creatively and generating those connections, so I highly recommend making time for play and getting your hands messy and just making some marks on paper.

Traditional Tools:
Medium weight sketch paper
Coloured paper
Scissors
Pencil crayons
Graphite powder
Graphite paste
Various graphite sticks
Eraser
Detail eraser (battery operated)
Smudge stick
Cotton ball
My fingers

My goal with each illustration of this book was to really play with the compositions of each mermaid in addition to the colour palettes to express its uniqueness and expand the narrative, in tandem with the designs of the traditional Polish folk art. I played around a lot with collage techniques and mixing different shapes together to compose the designs, which was a both an engaging and relaxing practice to do during the initial stages of illustrating. And as a result I now have a whole collection of folk art designs that I pull from for other projects I'm working on.