Lucky day for Balfour cow

Millers Flat author Kyle Mewburn  and Cromwell artist Deidre Copeland with their first...
Millers Flat author Kyle Mewburn and Cromwell artist Deidre Copeland with their first collaborative effort, the children's picture book Moon Cow which is being launched this week. Photo by Lynda Van Kempen.
Dairy cow No 377 was at risk of being culled but is now set for stardom.

The cow, on "Beans" and Chris Wilson's Balfour farm, was used as a model for the illustrations in Millers Flat author Kyle Mewburn's latest children's book - Moon Cow.

The art work is by Cromwell artist Deidre Copeland, better known for her giant close-up portraits.

Copeland visited her mates' farm to find an appropriate model for Milly - the cow who is the focus of the book.

"No 377 was a cool cow, with 'doopy' eyes and that's exactly what I wanted. They were thinking of culling her but I'm sure they won't now," Copeland said.

It was her first venture into illustrating books, after Mewburn recommended her.

"We met about a year ago at a Pecha Kucha night at Central Stories [in Alexandra].

Kyle was talking about his books and I was talking about my art and we thought: Voila! We should work on a book together."

The duo got on well and said it was the start of more joint ventures.

Although Copeland was an established artist, she still had to "audition" for the publishers to become the book's illustrator.

"They had to be convinced that a portrait artist could do something like this. She provided them with a cow sketch and that was it," Mewburn said.

Illustrations added the "wow" factor to his books.

"I just look at what they come up with and usually go wow! A good illustrator can take your book to the next level and that's what's happened here," he said.

"The illustrations are like the packaging that sells the book, and if a customer doesn't like the packaging and the cover, they won't pick the book up." Copeland said the illustrations, done with coloured pencils, were vastly different from work in her usual medium.

"Usually I'm standing up painting on big canvases and this time I was hunched over small drawings for seven days a week, 13 hours a day for two months, to produce the 15 or 16 drawings needed and meet the deadline.""Then I reintroduced myself to my kids (4-year-old son Willie and 2-year-old daughter Charli )."

The experience was enjoyable though, and she and Mewburn plan more projects together.

"I think I got lucky, working with Kyle for my first time," Copeland said.

Moon Cow is being launched this week and has been nominated for the 2012 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards.

It is Mewburn's "12th or 13th" picture book and he has seven more children's books being published in 2012, including one "nonsense" book and a "dark prose" one.

 

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