Sketches are done for Eensy, Teensy Teddy Bear's Adventure, and I sent a sketch dummy book to Mom for her birthday in September (I know, I'm behind in posting this.) She loves it! Yay.
Okay, I must amend this to say that sketches are almost done. Kurt set up the pages in InDesign with more final text. We went through the story and took a closer look at the text and the illustrations, and we agreed that we need to revise the text some and redo a few of the sketches, mostly in the beginning to make sure I'm getting across that Willie is eensy, teensy, itsy bitsy.
My Sketching Process
I started with rough sketches from my sketchbook and text dummy doodles which I scanned in and opened in Photoshop. I added the text in roughly the size it will be and the position. This is what where I started:
And here are the final sketches with added tone (to help me see the scene better) with a color sketch idea. (This spread will change with the coming revisions.)
I’ve discovered through illustrating many picture books, that I prefer to have some tone in my sketches. Line work alone doesn’t give me enough information as to the overall viability of the image. After all, life is solid objects not lines, so I’ve added tone to establish the feel and mood and the help establish where I want to lead the eye as you read through the book, making sure the page turn is dynamic and on purpose. This is also a great value study to make sure the focus is where it needs to be to tell the story with each scene that adds to the text.
That's the basics, and now I'm finishing a couple revisions and have several color paintings in progress and one done. I'll share more about that in my next post.
Thank you so much for following my journey. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments. I'd love to hear from you.
Are you enjoying these posts? Would you like more information? Or less? Is there an aspect of the process you'd like to hear more about?
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