'the children get a package' spread

Happy New Year everyone!

Although I was able to take a much needed short break over Christmas to spend some time with my family, I've been hard at work in my studio ever since.  I'm so happy to announce that I'm almost finished the artwork for the picture book that I'm illustrating: Bye, Bye, Butterflies.

Today I'd like to share another sketch from the book.  It's one of my favorites because I really enjoyed drawing all the little faces.  In this scene, Charlie and his classmates have just returned to school from spring break and have found a package waiting for them.  I thought it would be fun to show all the kids excitedly huddled together, looking down over the package.  On the facing page, I drew the actual box.

The thumbnail:

The sketch of the children:

Other than a few adjustments, this image really didn't change that much.
The final spread looks like this:

I decided that since the children were looking down at the package, that it made more sense to show a top view of it.  I also gave it a more dynamic placement.

the good stuff from 2011

With all of the travel and adventure that I experienced in 2010, it was one of the best years of my life and will be pretty much impossible to top.  Despite a severe lack of travel, 2011 has been really good in a different way.  The stability of staying in one place has made it possible to have a proper studio again, with access to my art supplies and papers, computer, printer, scanner, drawing table, good lighting... all things I went without while we were traveling.  I found ways to get around needing those things, but it's been nice to have everything at my fingertips again. 

The beginning of 2011 saw us move to the city of Calgary, Alberta, into a fun, trendy, and central neighborhood.  We settled into an apartment with a studio space and enjoyed staying in one place for a while.  It was nice to reconnect with family and old friends.  But we also made many new friends this year.

I did illustration work for a bunch of new clients.  I got a part time job to get me out of the studio and to take some of the pressure off of illustrating.  And I learned a ton about spices thanks to The Silk Road Spice Merchant.  My favorite dish that I learned to make this year was Louisiana Shrimp Gumbo. Yum.

The biggest joy 2011 brought was definitely being commissioned by Fitzhenry & Whiteside to illustrate the picture book Bye, Bye, Butterflies.  It's been a goal of mine to do that since I graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2002.  It took 9 years, but I did it!

Happy New Year everyone!

the 'caterpillar' spread

Things have been a little quiet on the blog as of late, but believe me when I say they've been quite busy in the studio.  The picture book that I'm illustrating, Bye, Bye, Butterflies, is coming along nicely.  I'm currently painting spreads and I look forward to sharing some of the finished, full color images down the road.

For now, I'm going to share another sketch. 

I really struggled to find a solution for this particular spread.  I didn't want to be literal and draw exactly what the text said so it was quite a challenge to come up with something that was a bit abstract but still appropriate.  Probably because it was such a struggle, when I finally came up with my solution I was especially happy with the image.

Here it is:

It might not look like much here, but try to imagine a bunch of colorful and interesting caterpillars marching across the page in this lovely shape. 

Unfortunately, this is the only place where it will see the light of day.  Once I submitted my sketches to my editor, we realized that we needed to shuffle some things around and the only way to make it work was to combine this spread with another one.  It broke my heart to have to change it as I really enjoyed the graphic shape moving across the page, but it was all for the greater good.  The spread at the climax of the story now works much better because of this change. 

This is what the new spread will look like:

alberta by numbers

Today the postman brought me the December issue of AlbertaViews Magazine with my work illustrating the Alberta by Numbers section on the back page.  It was a fun little assignment to do and the art director was great to work with.

Also today, after almost exactly 5 years, my blog has reached 100 followers. 
Thanks for being interested in my work everyone.  It means a lot to me :)

illustration friday - round

Because of the all the work involved with the picture book, I really don't have time to create anything new for IF right now.  But when I saw this week's topic, I immediately thought of this image of a very round lady that I painted last summer.

little girl in a red dress

This past weekend I finished an illustration for the picture book that I'm working on and I'm quite happy with how it turned out.  I'm not going to share the entire image right now, but here's a little peek at the bottom right corner:

illustration friday - vanity

This image is an oldie but it's one of my favorites. It's more about the lack of vanity, but I think it's still appropriate for the theme.

the 'story time' spread

Today I thought I'd share some sketches from the picture book that I'm working on and show how the spread has evolved.

Let me begin by setting the scene.  The first part of this story takes place in the spring and the second part takes place one year later.  Between those two parts, there is one spread that ties them together and that is the spread that I'm going to share today.

The text talks about the main character, Charlie, starting school, attending story time, going to gym class, and then the passing of the seasons.  I really liked the idea of showing story time.  I thought it would make a nice image to have the teacher in a classroom setting with books and a globe, reading to a bunch of students sitting on the floor around her.

Here's my first thumbnail:

The problem with this image is that it doesn't convey the passing of time.  When a person reading the book turns that page, it has to feel like a year has passed and the above image doesn't convey that.

Showing some smaller spot illustrations helps to show the passing of time.  Since we go from fall, to winter, to spring, I decided to show one scene for each season.

I moved my story time sketch over to the left side of the spread and changed it to include a window so that a tree with fall leaves could be seen. On the right side of the spread, I drew two small spot illustrations.  After trying out many options, I decided to have Charlie and his friend making a snowman for the winter scene and Charlie jumping in a puddle for the spring scene.  I like the variety of showing Charlie interacting with another character and also showing him by himself.

My next thumbnail:

The proper sketches:

 (I thought it would be fun to have the pages that the teacher is reading be from an upcoming spread as a bit of foreshadowing :)

 This is what the spread looks like:

Or it might look like this:

I'm still experimenting to see which layout works better with the text.

storyboards for Bye, Bye, Butterflies!

I thought it might be interesting to show how much thought and work go into the early planning for the visuals for a book.  Everyone works a bit differently, but this was my approach.

Once I had read the manuscript for Bye, Bye, Butterflies!, I started by making a lot of notes about the things in the story that stood out to me and the initial images that came to my mind.  Then I doodled very rough layouts in small boxes to see what might work.  I did a lot of those.  Once I had an idea of which layouts seemed to work, I did slightly more refined drawings (but still quite rough) in little boxes that were scaled down from the actual size of the book.  That way I could see all of the spreads for the book on one piece of paper and I could see how they would work together.

My storyboard went through several incarnations as I tried to work out the pacing and figure out the best visuals to tell the story.  Once I was happy with it, I showed it to my editor who gave me very helpful feedback.  Then I used the storyboard to create the proper sketches for the book.

Stay tuned for a peek at some of those...

just a peek

Last weekend I completed two illustration projects that I've had on the go.  Although I'm not showing them in their entirety until they're printed, here's a tiny peek...