The Writing Process: Author/Illustrator Blog Tour

Hallo blog readers,

So I just got tagged as the next illustrator in this neat Blog Tour. Jessixa Bagley—excellent friend and uber talented author-illustrator—tagged me in this series. I met Jessixa at my first SCBWI conference in 2011, and from that day on, I've been lucky to call her friend. She is a super talented lady with an incredible sense of humor. She populates her watercolor world with all manner of adorable and trouble-making woodland critters, and her illustrations have amazing heart. When I first read her forthcoming book, Boats for Papa (due out in the Spring of 2015), I had to wipe away tears. This Spring, run, don't walk, run to your local bookstore. This is one you won't want to miss.

 

And now that you've all explored Jessixa's work and website, on to the questions...

1. What am I currently working on?

As usual, I'm currently working on more than one project. I'm just wrapping up the final illustrations for a picture book called A Penguin Named Patience (written by Suzanne Lewis and published by Sleeping Bear Press) due out in February 2015. I'm also in the process of working on new book dummies for two of my own stories. 

2. Why do I write what I write?

Life can be hard and serious and terrible at times, and I like to write stories that transport the reader somewhere else for the duration of the book. I like a story with a touch of whimsy or humor or a little bit of magic, but also with a lot of heart. My stories are usually born out of character sketches. I'm drawn to strong central characters, so when I draw a child or animal that has a lot of innate personality, I'm driven to figure out who he/she is and find his/her story. I also find that level of emotional connection is strongest when there is an important relationship between characters in the book. Many of my recent stories are about friendship, finding friends in unlikely places, and the joy of an unexpected relationship.  I want to connect to my readers through the emotional connection between my characters.

3. How does my writing/illustrating process work?

It always depends on the story. Sometimes I write a full manuscript before I start drawing. Other times, I find a compelling character/image in my sketchbook, and I write a story based on that character. I'm exploring new methods of working, though, and trying to develop stories simultaneously with the illustrations.

Really, though, everything begins here, in my sketchbooks. I draw and draw and draw, sketching scenes, characters, and compositions, sometimes adding lines of text or dialogue, until I've found my main character(s).

Once the preliminary text and character sketches are done, I move onto thumbnails using large pieces of 11x17" paper. The thumbnail stage is often a chicken-scratch stage, and most of the sketches are pretty unintelligible to most folks. It does, however, help me see all of the spreads at once and get a sense of the pacing and initial compositions.

Once I've worked through the thumbnails a few times, I make my the first dummy in InDesign and print it out. This dummy is just the thumbnails blown up with the text laid over these very rough sketches. I could leave the dummy on the computer, but I find that it helps me to hold a physical book and turn the pages. Then I can see if the breakdown of text and images actually works together. Does it flow properly? Is the pacing right?

I love making dummies. There's nothing like holding an actual book in your hands. After the first thumbnail dummy, I go back, revise my rough sketches until I'm satisfied with the pacing, and then I do it all over again with tighter, cleaner sketches.

Each "final dummy" has two or three full color pieces inside.

And if I'm presenting the dummy at a portfolio show or conference, I frequently "bind" it using the backs of old paper pads and sketchbooks to give it the feel and weight of a finished book.

The full-color, finished work inside the dummies are all painted pretty similarly. (I've done a few posts about my painting process in the past. They all start with a palette and some daubs of paint (usually Holbein's Acryla-Gouache), 

color tests,

and character tests.
Here I painted the same character, first using a combination of watercolor and Acryla-Gouache and again just using the Acryla-Gouache.

When I'm satisfied with all of the above, I move onto the larger finished piece.

And that's how I work.

Next up is the AMAAAAZING Maple Lam. Maple is a friend, fellow Mentee, and crazy talented illustrator. Her unending well of creativity and book ideas—picture books, graphic novels, and non-fiction stories—never ceases to amaze me. She is one of the hardest working illustrators I know, and she just wrapped up her first picture book, Two Girls Want a Puppy out next year with HarperCollins. Her whimsical characters and bright colors are sure to make you smile. Check out her post next week!

 

Thanks again to Jessixa Bagley and previous post-er, Brooke Boynton Hughes, for getting me involved. Make sure to check out their wonderful work.

Til next time!

Happiness is...

Hey there blog readers,

I know it's been ages since I posted new work. It's been a busy fall... and winter. Right, it's December. Yeep! When did that happen?

I say busy, but I also mean excellent. Life has been completely and totally swell of late. After the wedding (currently working on a post about that...), there was a trip to New Orleans for illustrator fun times, the holiday mishmash that was Thanksgivukkah (I'm sad I won't get to use this word again for several decades), prepping for and moderating the SCBWI illustrator panel last week, jobs (right, work), family whatnot, holiday things, and a whoooole lot of drawing and painting (including two new dummies!). Yep, all in all, it has been pretty grand.

Since things have been so happy and excellent of late, I wanted to share a little piece that makes me grin like a fool from dummy #1. For those of you who are illustrators, if you're like me, you mimic the faces of your characters as you draw them. Frequently when working I take photobooth pictures and keep a mirror handy, not just to check out my ridiculous mug, but to really nail the emotion of the character. Making this piece was an incredibly fun and joyful experience. I couldn't help smiling.

Happiness is...

New art!

Apologies my dear blog readers. I have been three weeks silent... but let me tell you, they've been a busy three weeks. Most of my time has been spent at my drawing table and only on the computer to do the cursory e-mail check and to hit play on the day's chosen playlist or podcast, so all e-whatnot has come to a screeching halt. However, in the hours that I've spent not on the computer, I finished putting together a total of five dummies and four new paintings. Chock full and all around exciting, but admittedly exhausting.

But this is a short update, as there is another painting waiting for me on the drawing table. In the meantime, however, I thought I'd give you a sneaky peek at one of the new ones.

From the balloon book (as of yet, untitled):

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...

Book Project Part II: Delays

Book Project Part II: Delays

In which the project is nearly scrapped and an identity crisis ensues...

Again, apologies for the delay with these. This week was technically Spring "break"... I use the term "break" extremely loosely because break for me meant a week of 8 hr (sometimes 8+, except for Tuesday, when I took the afternoon off) workdays in the studio. As such, I finished three (soon to be four) new paintings for this very project, which I'm not going to post tonight because we have a bit of catching up to do first. Soon, dear readers, soon... all in good time.

So let's get to it, shall we? When I last left you, I had just finished the first dummy for the book. It was fairly complete - a full 32 pages - textless, but complete. And then, then there was the meeting - the meeting that turned everything upside down.

Each of us met with our creative writing teacher, who, when it was my turn, suggested that I scrap my entire project. I'm not going to go into the gory details, but it led to a series of successive identity crises that had me questioning everything from the kind of work I do, how I do it, why I want to do kids' books, if that's really what I want to spend my time on... oof... exhausting. Ultimately I did not scrap the story, but I spent the next three weeks doing heaps of sketches, reworking the story itself, changing it from the inside out, and playing with adding text. In my last post, I mentioned that I felt that the story lacked a central conflict, and while the reworking isn't entirely complete, the story arc is much more solid. So the crisis-inducing meeting, despite turning my world upside-down and inside-out for much of February, ultimately strengthened the story, forcing me to push it further. There is a lot I still have to work out about the story line and actual text of the manuscript, but the ideas are there.

And as I mentioned earlier, only one of the sketches you've seen made it into the book. Post crisis, the new dummy had 30 new illustrations (a number of which, I'm still doing revisions on). Here are a handful of the new images:

After spending so many weeks working out the story and sketching, the next step in my process was to start figuring out how I wanted to render the artwork. Watercolor? Ink? Gouache? Acrylic? So many options! I knew that I wanted a really saturated series of images, so I started looking back at the work I had rendered last term and finally came to Carl's final project - a folding screen rendered on black rag board. Perfect! Because the story takes place at night, the dark board would be perfect for rendering night skies and likewise would help the colors pop and shine in vibrant contrast to the black background. And so I gave it a go, rendering a couple of test illustrations in gouache on bits of board leftover from the Four Seasons screen.

Success!

And thus, I'm on my way.

And so I shall leave you until next time (until the first of the colored spreads and spring break paintings) with this marvelous quote by Madeleine L'Engle (who was, it is worth noting, a Smithie).

"You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it's going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for children."

Book Project Part I: The Saga Begins Anew

Book Project Part I:

The Saga Begins Anew

In which lions become rabbits and things get off the ground... and by things, I mean rabbits...

Long awaited, I know, but here we are... finally, FINALLY a post about the second semester book project. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, Viktor is no longer with us this term. We do, however, have a new book project. This semester, Marshall and Carl have joined forces to create one incredible team... I feel as though they should have superhero names or a daring duo sort of title. (Note, I am taking suggestions, so feel free to write in with your best picks.) ... alas, digressing... Marshall and Carl have teamed up to run our book project workshop.

The project is essentially a mini-thesis. In past years, the dynamic duo (not official title) have given a general theme or over-arching subject for the project. This year, however, the project was left wiiiiiiide open. At the end of first semester, Marshall and Carl left us essentially with: We trust you. Imagine what you will. Now, go forth and make art.

When we arrived back at school in January, we had to have a proposal ready to go... which I did. For this project, I had two ideas, both revolving around New York City. The first was a book of short stories with illustrations in all different styles and mediums and all different characters and styles of narration; the main character in the book, however, would have been the city itself. The second idea, just the kernel of an idea really, was for a wordless picture book about a wild night-time romp around the city but which ultimately lacked a central conflict. Over break, I wrestled with my ideas, wrote A TON, but ultimately decided to do the picture book despite the missing conflict.

And so I drew and I drew and I drew and then guess what? Yes! I drew some more. I spentmuch of the beginning of the project sketching thumbnails and putting together a book dummy (essentially a mock-up of the entire book). A traditional picture book is 32 pages, so I used that as my framework and kept drawing.

This round of sketches went through major revisions... and of the sketches I'm sharing with you today - believe it or not - only one of them made the final cut in its original form.

In the next bunch, you can see the progression of sketches... sometimes I do some very general outlines and flesh it out later.

So there you have it... the first of many posts about the second semester book project... stay tuned for further adventures in which I tell you more about my actual idea and how the story has changed entirely and even - GASP - how I was told to scrap the whole project and start over. Stay tuned dear readers! There are more sketches, black rag board, tons of paint, and color ahead!