WORTHWHILE DISTRACTONS

I have a very well worn copy of Alice in Wonderland. It was mine when I was a kid and it was my mom's when she was a kid. I love that book. In addition, I used to have a vinyl recording of Alice in Wonderland. I think I wore the grooves away listening to it so much. I wish I still had it. I can almost hear the masterful narrator and the voices of the characters. (It seems masterful in my head anyway.) The images of the story have swirled around in my brain for as long as I can remember. I've wanted to illustrate it for a while, but it wasn't a priority until last week when I finally began working on my Middle Grade Alice in Wonderland series. I started with a scene of Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Then one morning the phone rang. It was one of those phone calls that turns the world upside down. Now I feel like I'm in the rabbit hole suspended in time while the world spins out of control. I'm working as much as I can to keep myself busy while things are in limbo and I found some other worthwhile distractions to keep my mind occupied. Here are some of them...just in case you need a distraction too:

The winner for the Tomie dePaola Illustrator Award was announced. Click this text to see the winner and runners up. The entries for the Tomie dePaola Illustrator Award are fantastic. You can see some of them at Diandra Mae's Unofficial Gallery. The last time I counted there were 140, but more appear every day. Over 300 illustrators entered and hopefully all of them will end up in the gallery. Click the acorn to go.

This month I've joined the 2012 Comment Challenge and have discovered some great people and blogs. (This has been a phenomenally great distraction. Thanks everyone!) This is a 21 day challenge to build community in the kidlit blogosphere by commenting on other kidlit blogs.

January is also the start of the Picture Book Dummy Challenge - a 25 week picture book challenge with online support from a fantastic community of children's illustrators and writers. I've joined up to create and illustrate the story that intrigued Marla Frazee in my portfolio critique this summer. She saw an illustration I did from an idea I had a couple years ago and challenged me to write the story and submit it. Here I go!

February is PubSubPackMo (Publisher Submission Packet Month). I'm continuing the tradition to increase my submission list for my illustration postcards and future picture book dummies. This is the month that I research publishers to find the ones that are a good fit for me. My goal is to add one new publisher to my list every day, but I like to add an even 30...just because. Join me if you like! I'll be posting along the way.

In March I'm scheduled to do a workshop on children's publishing at Bona Fide Books - our local publisher. Details to come.

And finally, because I love seeing other illustrators in action, I've put together some links of other illustrators doing their thing in a little blog tour. Enjoy these links:

• See a magazine illustration in progress by illustrator extraordinaire, Juana Martinez-Neal.
• Illustrator Diandra Mae - organizer of the Unofficial Gallery of the Tomie dePaola Illustrator Award and Illustrator Coordinator for SCBWI Houston - shows a step by step of her illustration for the Tomie dePaola Illustrator Award.
• Here is a step by step digital illustration by illustrator/animator Russ Cox.
• Illustrator John Deininger calls this demo "...fast and fun and just messy enough to feel like a kid."
• Illustrator Jed Alexander shares his experience illustrating for Cricket Magazine.
• Illustrator Roberta Baird shares her process on several different illustrations in this Illustrator Saturday interview.

If you have any illustration process links to add, please feel free to put them in a comment.

I'm off to find another worthwhile distraction in Wonderland...

MY PROCESS: A PICTURE BOOK ILLUSTRATION FROM START TO FINISH

 I used to spend a lot of time trying to recreate the gestures and facial expressions from my initial sketches. I was losing magic every time I re-traced my work to head into a new stage of my illustration process. To remedy this, I now let my scanner capture the details so I don't lose what's important and then I continue scanning, enlarging and revising at each stage until I'm ready to begin the final illustration. I've spent the last few years making my process more efficient and it has paid off, not only in saving time, but I'm having more fun than ever.  Here is an illustration from start to finish:

STEP 1 - THUMBNAILS:

Beginning rough thumbnails

I get my first batch of ideas on paper as thumbnails. I use cheap white printer paper and a Number Two pencil - nothing special. I don't want fear of wasting expensive materials to hold me back. I make my thumbnails the approximate proportions of the final. The thumbnails shown here are about 3"x2". They're super quick and mostly for my benefit. If I were doing work for a client, I would pick 2-3 of these thumbnails to work up for presentation. The client would then choose the preferred direction(s). In this case I was the client and chose the lower right thumbnail in this group to illustrate a single block of text.

STEP 2 - REVISED THUMBNAILS:

I picked this thumbnail to illustrate

I begin revising in miniature

This thumbnail is evolving, but it needs more work to get the POV (point of view) right. I want the little chicken to feel a bit left out and small because everything in his world happens over his head - in more ways than one. I take the image into Photoshop and start playing with angles and placement of characters. I also straighten up the overall shape of my drawing and erase areas that need to be revised by hand. I always scan at a higher resolution than needed so I can continue to enlarge and print at each stage.

STEP 3 - REVISIONS FOR BEGINNING ROUGH STAGE:

Revisions continue at a larger size

Here I made revisions to the image by hand after enlarging 10% and printing out.







STEP 4 FINAL ROUGHS:
I scan again, enlarge more, print again and continue revising.

Larger still - it continues to evolve

I continue in this way - scanning, enlarging, printing and revising in pencil until I have a full size rough (in this case 16"x10"). I lighten the image in Photoshop before printing whenever I need to. I'm using a higher quality inkjet paper at this stage. It is thicker and able to hold onto all the details I'm adding. It's about $10 per ream.

Almost full size, I finish smoothing out the details

Black and white full size final rough

STEP 5 - COLOR ROUGH:

This may seem a little backward, but at this point I take my 16x10 final black and white rough and reduce it by about 65%. Exploring color goes much faster at this size. I print it out on untextured, matte photo paper and make my color decisions. I write lots of notes so I remember what colored pencils and layers I used. This will be the map I use during the final illustration. The color and detail are as complete as I can make them at this size and on this type of paper.

This is the color rough at 25% of the final size.

STEP 6 - FINAL ILLUSTRATION:

On the left is what I enlarged and printed onto my drawing paper. The "color map" with notes that I will follow is on the right.

 To begin my final illustration, I scan the 6x4 color rough at high resolution and enlarge to full size in Photoshop. This is what I will print onto my drawing surface. It will give me my basic drawing and under layers of color to work with. I have to complete far fewer layers than I did when I started my drawings on blank paper with a pencil outline. I also retain more details and gestures from the beginning stages. I'm not concerned with the roughness of the color I'm printing because everything will be smoothed out in the final process. Along with the color from the initial printout, I will be adding pen and ink stipple for the shadow areas and colored pencil over everything. All details need to be worked out before this stage, but minor edits can be done in Photoshop after the final scan. Start to finish this 16x10 illustration was completed within two weeks while working regular hours. (While I finished the illustration within two weeks - I was not working solid 8 hour days on this project alone. I finished it comfortably within this time and also made sure to take days off.) In the past this illustration, without the thumbnails and roughs, would have taken 3-4 weeks of working long hours - maybe even without taking days off.

The final illustration

So, that's my illustration process - getting better and more enjoyable all the time. My new method is far more conducive to completing a picture book while maintaining sanity - not to mention a relationship with my family.

Here's to the best in 2012!