A Penguin Named Patience - Thumbnails and Scribbly Penguins

Continuing where we left off...

Once I had my penguin drawings down, I began doodling in the margins of the manuscript of spots and images I thought I might want to feature in the story. Those doodles turned into pages and pages of really rough, scribbly sketches.

Scribbly dancing penguins...

Scribbly marching penguins...

All kinds of scribbly penguins...

I took all of those scribbly penguins and began laying them out until I had a sketchy idea for every page in the book.

Throughout this process, there's a lot of back-and-forth with the Art Director, determining what scenes best illustrate the text and tell the story. The rough sketches shift and change until we have a full set of  sketches for the entire book.

Stay tuned... next up on the blog: final sketches and final art.

For more info about the book, check out some of these reviews. We've been really lucky to have the book featured on a number of different blogs and websites, including Kirkus, Miss Marple's Musings, The Simple Moms, The Bookworm's local paper reviews, the National Book Examiner. My personal favorite is this synopsis by a 5 yr old in the San Francisco Book Review.

And don't forget! I'll be speaking about A Penguin Named Patience on Saturday, May 16th at Books of Wonder.