Adventure Jock
and the treasure map
Jock was lucky enough to find an old treasure map in the backyard. He has decided to go on a treasure hunt to see what he can find. Will he find treasure? Who will he meet along the way?
Check out a sneak peek of the book.
Buy Now for $18*
* Pricing is in New Zealand Dollars and excludes delivery.
… also available as an Amazon Kindle ebook.
About the creator
Rina Botha
The desire to create a story book has always lingered within me. In 2013 I started the marvellous journey with Jock. It was an exciting and sometimes daunting project. But a journey that I am grateful for, as it was a big milestone for the artist within me.
I wanted to tell a simple tale of adventure and friendship, set in the beautiful rolling New Zealand landscape. It was important to be me to strive to capture the essence of New Zealand and not conform to generalisation of storytelling.
A Sneak Peek
The Journey
Jock was born
Beginning 2013
The Jock story was born while telling magical stories in the early morning hours to my son, trying to keep him quiet for just a little bit longer. It was this particular story that he wanted to hear over and over again.
A few years later he modelled for me as Jock!
Workshop
Ending 2013
I participated in a children’s book illustration workshop on character development by Sandra Morris at the end of 2013. It was a blissful weekend spent developing Jock and seeing him come to life with a clay model.
Deciding on a technique
The next step was to decide what techniques I want to use to illustrate the book. I knew that I wanted to use my computer as little as possible. I usually work in acrylics, but I soon realised that watercolour would make more sense for my book illustrations.
I finally decided on using watercolour and coloured pencils, with an oil pencil for the outline.
Developing the storyboard
Now this was a lot of fun. I love compositions! I started with small thumbnails, working out the overall flow between the pages. Then I worked at adding more and more detail, until I reached my final sketches.
Keeping to the colour pallete
Next I worked out what colours to use for each component of the book. It was important to use the same mix for sequential pages.
Getting help from editors
During 2018
I am not a writer, so I asked Nicola McCloy, Karen de Wet and Lisa Dunlop to help me edit and improve the text which slowly developed into the story I'm publishing here.
Setting the pages up for printing
October 2018
Hans Weichselbaum form Digital Image did a wonderful job scanning my artwork. I then used Adobe Photoshop to clean the scans up a little. After that, I laid out the images with Adobe inDesign and added the story's text. The helpful Amy from Bookprint showed me some tricks to set my files up correctly for the double spreads. I had to check the proofs and then the book was ready to go to print!
Promoting and selling the book
November 2018
My lovely husband built the new website for my book. I asked for a static website, but he couldn't resist building it with Gatsby, React and Stripe.
And now it's time to promote my book and and share it with the world!
Book Details
- Title
- Adventure Jock and the treasure map
- Author, Illustrator
- Botha, Rina
- ISBN
- 978-0-473-46032-7
- Publisher
- Self published
- Weight
- 120gms
- Dimensions
- 250mm × 200mm × 4mm
- Format
- Paperback, 32 pages
- Medium
- Watercolour and colour pencil on paper
The illustrations in this book were created with watercolour and coloured pencils (Faber Castell Polychromos) on Archers 300g hot pressed paper. For the outlines an oil pencil (Cretacolor Sepia Dark) was used.
Printed by Bookprint in Auckland.
View National Library record.
- Alternate Formats
- Amazon Kindle (ebook)
- Library Availability
- Alexander Turnbull Library