Thesis Dummies

Halloo my dear blog readers,

First, thanks to everyone for the congrats and well wishes. The scholarship was a really exciting surprise this week.

But moving on... you've all been extremely patient. I keep dropping hints about my mysterious thesis, one book, two books, three, four, maybe six book project. Perhaps I should tell you what I'm doing. Originally, my thought was to make a dummy of two or three different ideas and then pick one to finish for the thesis. However, picture book publishing looks less kindly on finished work... an entirely fleshed-out book leaves no room for the excellent collaboration that happens between an author/illustrator and her editor/art director. Publishers do, in fact, prefer to see dummies in the sketch stage with two or three finished pieces thrown in to show how you would render the final artwork.

So why pick one book to finish? The upshot is I'm not. Rather than one book for thesis, I'm doing very finished dummies of three - six original books with two or three finished pieces of art per story. I have one 99% done, a second nearing that 99% mark, and then the third - sixth book... well, loads to do still. Depending on how satisfied I am with the work, I'll show three or six of the books. Though admittedly, a bit schizophrenic, it's been great to have more than one project to work on. When I get fed up with or sick of or stuck on one of them, I can shift gears, work on a second book, and then return to the previous project refreshed and ready to go.

You've already seen a couple of the finishes going into the books, but here are some of the sketch pages that I've been working on this week for book number two.

Be forewarned, the images are not for the faint of heart... here be monsters...