Naturama
2016
Naturama is a beautiful large format Irish wildlife book for children, written by Michael Fewer and Illustrated by Melissa Doran (me – before I changed my surname to Culhane), featuring 84 colour nature drawings. Published by Gill Books. It was later accompanied by a pocket sized My Naturama Nature Journal, published the following year.
Task
Complete Book Illustration
It was a fantastic experience to collaborate with the writer Michael Fewer to create Naturama and its companion book, My Naturama Nature Journal. He is a beautiful writer and created a gentle and playful introduction to the natural world. My illustrations for the book are inspired by my own childhood, growing up on a small farm in county Leitrim. I kept nature journals (see videos of them below) and drew pictures and wrote stories about everything I saw out in the wild, especially the birds.
As you can see from the videos below – I drew most of the birds and animals for Naturama by hand and then scanned them in and collaged them digitally, combining some digital elements in Adobe Illustrator.
Some links where you can buy Naturama online…
(please support your local bookstore and keep them open)
From Gill Books, Ireland
From Liber Books, Sligo
From Dubray Books, Dublin
From Jiminy, Ireland
From The Flower Press Company, Kerry
Special shout out to Bí Urban shop in Dublin where I had a Naturama exhibition..and to the gift shop in the Botanic Gardens….you can buy both books in both places :)
Or, you could always borrow it from your local library to have a look :)
