About

Claire Keay works as a freelance illustrator from her small studio at home which is in Rayleigh, an old market town in Essex, England. She has her own website called Jellypark from where she sells her popular digital craft supplies and her original paintings for children. Jellypark has a talented team of designers who make craft samples with the Jellypark products and run challenge blogs, one for adults and one for their junior fans.

Claire can usually be found always busy illustrating children's books for a variety of publishing clients across the world but recently she has been working with Interactbooks to develop a new range of interactive children's book Apps for the iPad and iPhone.

A self taught artist, Claire had a variety of jobs after leaving school (including insurance clerk, a Nursery Nurse, retail shop assistant,  sports club team leader, advertising agency...) before deciding to follow her dream of turning her much loved hobby of doodling into a career.

Claire will  happily be painting with good old fashioned pen and watercolour wash one day then jump to painting digitally on her computer the next - she loves them both. She is excited by how technology has become as an important tool to the artist as the paintbrush.

"The internet has given me a world wide shop front to show people my art, I have sold original paintings across the world including  Australia, Japan, throughout Europe and the USA. I can connect 24 hours a day with customers and other artists through social media - customers will often post up what they have made with their Jellypark craft stamps and I get such a kick out of seeing that.

While I love traditional children's books and I am honoured to be able to illustrate some, the explosion of technology such as iPads and other tablets means it is a very exciting time to be exploring a whole new artistic way to create a story for children to enjoy."