The Making of... Oaky and the Sun

The story of Oaky and the Sun was first written by poet AE Ballakisten in 1998.

In 2012, he adapted it to be a children's book.

Taryn Lock, with no formal training in Art (only having done Art in grades 8 and 9 many years ago!), took on the challenge to do the illustrations to bring Oaky to life.

Here are some pictures showing the original pencil drawings of Oaky while on a trip near Montague in the Western Cape in early 2012.

While on sabbatical in the US (June 2012 to June 2013), Taryn worked on the digital drawings of Oaky and the Sun. She scanned in her pencil drawings, read up a lot about illustrations and experimented (with a lot of trials and errors!) with different types of graphic software and eventually used a combination of Photoshop and Paint. Many hours of hard work went into the final product but all worth it in the end!

 See Oaky and the Sun coming to life! :)