Behind the Scenes of Charlie's Dirt Day - PART 6 - sketch

This is the last sketch that I'll be sharing from my new children's book, Charlie's Dirt Day. Stay tuned to see how the final art turned out; I'll be sharing that illustration tomorrow.

If you've missed any of my previous process posts from this book, you can find them all under the hashtag #CharliesDirtDay.

Behind the Scenes of Charlie's Dirt Day - PART 5 - sketch

This scene takes place a year after the rest of the story as the characters are heading to the next annual Dirt Day. The same characters who attended the previous year have decided to come back, but because so much time has passed, I included some small changes in their appearance, such as the hair on their heads and facial hair. The two little girls who met at Dirt Day last year became friends and are going together this year.

You can see from my sketches below that I had to alter my original layout in order to be able to fit in everything I wanted to include plus have enough room for all the text. The final sketch features some of the things that Charlie wants to grow in his garden.

Behind the Scenes of Charlie's Dirt Day - PART 4 - sketch

For this sketch, I tried to make the composition more interesting by playing with the foreground. I liked the idea of bringing the viewer into the scene on the left side of the spread with a close up of a bowl of freshly picked tomatoes while Charlie and Mr. Martino made a sauce in the background on the right side. Whenever possible, I like to integrate the text with the image and the bowl provided the perfect opportunity for that.

Because Charlie is so short, my initial plan had been to have him standing on a stool, stirring the pot of sauce. However, my publisher pointed out that it wasn't the safest place to put a little boy, something I hadn't considered when I was coming up with ideas for the spread. I reworked the drawing to instead show Charlie offering Mr. Martino tomatoes from the bowl.

Behind the Scenes of Charlie's Dirt Day - PART 3 - sketch

When designing an illustration for a picture book, you need to leave room for the text. This double page spread had quite a bit of text to work around. In my initial thumbnail, I had envisioned the older man on the right side filling most of the page, however, I ended up needing to adjust him quite a bit to make even more room for text in the space behind him.

Behind the Scenes of Charlie's Dirt Day - PART 2 - final art

This illustration is probably my favourite one from Charlie's Dirt Day because I included lots of personal touches. Several of the characters in this spread made appearances in my first picture book, Bye, Bye Butterflies, such as the lady in the yellow cardigan on the left, the little boy pulling the wagon and the little girl in the right corner with the green ribbon in her hair.  I thought it would be nice for the children who were familiar with the other book to make those connections.

In Bye, Bye Butterflies, the lady in the yellow cardigan appeared on the opening spread. I used the pattern in her shirt to reference an upcoming event in that book. Her shirt had butterflies on it. In Charlie's Dirt Day, I used the pattern in her dress in the same way.

The little boy pulling the wagon is actually based on my husband. He used to work for Apple as an iPhone technician and wore a dark blue shirt with an apple on it. I lightened the shirt and substituted a different kind of fruit. I'd also like to draw your attention to the words on the side of the wagon. My husband's name is Dario.

There is a mom in a green dress, a dad in a green hat and a little girl in a red dress at the top left. They're based on my friends, Kelci Hind and Colin Leach and their daughter, Juniper. Kelci and Colin own The Silk Road Spice Merchant and have been extremely supportive of my illustrative career and my previous book.

The woman in the red dress in the top right is based on my friend, illustrator Karen Klassen.

Behind the Scenes of Charlie's Dirt Day - PART 2 - sketch

This image is one that I had in my mind from the very beginning, and you can see from the initial thumb nail sketch below that it didn't change much. Because of all of the characters that I wanted to include, this spread was quite intimidating for me. I ended up spending a lot of time on it in order to fit in everything in a way that worked.

When dealing with a double page spread, it's really important to pay attention to the gutter, that's the part of the image where the page folds. You don't want to have anything important, like someone's face, crossing that line. The part of the illustration that goes through the gutter can get lost once the book is bound.

In the end, I had quite a lot of fun with this spread and as a result, it's probably my favourite illustration from the book. I'll share the final art tomorrow, along with some of the personal things that I snuck into the image.

Follow my hashtag, #CharliesDirtDay.

Behind the Scenes of Charlie's Dirt Day - PART 1 - storyboards

To kick things off, I'd like to share my initial thumb nail sketches and storyboards for my soon-to-be-released children's book, Charlie's Dirt Day, written by Andrew Larsen and published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

The first thing I did when I got the manuscript was read it over many times, making notes in the margins and jotting down ideas and images that came to mind. Once I had a good feel for the story, I started to think about pacing, how the story would unfold, and began the process of breaking up the text. I found it helpful to cut up the actual manuscript so that it was easier to move around the blocks of text.

Once I was satisfied, I started making little thumbnail drawings to explore different ways of illustrating each page. Having the entire book laid out on one piece of paper made it easy to see how the illustrations related to each other. I worked on the thumbnails until I felt like there was enough variety to keep the spreads interesting.

There's quite a lot of work that goes into the planning of a picture book before the drawing of larger and more detailed sketches can begin.

Follow my hashtag, #CharliesDirtDay.

giraffe - finished art

Here's my finished piece for the 'It's a Jungle Out There' illustration show, on now at the EPCOR CENTRE's Ledge Gallery.

If anyone's interested, you can see my sketches for this project HERE, and I posted photos of my painting process below. 

giraffe - sketches

These sketches are from a painting that I just did for the 'It's a Jungle Out There' show. It's the first illustration that I've worked on since I had my baby last July and it was so great to get back to that.

The idea behind this show is that the animals have escaped from the zoo and are loose in the city. Each participating artist got an animal and it was up to the artist the decide what the animal did in the city.

I got the giraffe and I spent quite a lot of time thinking about my concept because i really wanted to take advantage of the giraffe's long neck. I also wanted to come up with an interesting way to fit it into the horizontal format of the project.

I don't often draw animals so it took me a few tries before I ended up with something that I was happy with. My initial sketches were too realistic for my tastes, but I needed to get those out of my system in order to arrive at something more simple and playful.

the cover for Charlie's Dirt Day

Here it is! The cover of my next picture book, Charlie's Dirt Day, written by Andrew Larsen and published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside. 

I worked on this book through most of my pregnancy, including 23 weeks of morning sickness. It was a total labour of love and I can't wait to see it in print. It was originally slated for release in September, but that date has been pushed back a bit. I'll post the new release date once it's been announced.

If anyone is interested, I posted some of the process for this cover below.

albertaviews magazine

I have an illustration in the November issue of Albertaviews Magazine. The article is a moving personal essay about a man's rehab after suffering a stroke on the operating table. It's an optimistic piece, and also quite humorous. Huge thank you to Art Director, Beate Wichmann.

YABS poster and postcard

Back in January, the Young Alberta Book Society (YABS) asked me to illustrate a poster and postcard to promote their annual Taleblazers festival to schools and libraries in the province of Alberta. During the festival, authors and illustrators travel around doing presentations for students of all ages.

While brainstorming ideas for the poster and postcard, I was focussing on the purpose of having an author or illustrator speak to a group of students. I think it's about getting kids excited about books and writing and drawing. Making them feel inspired and like they can do it too.  That's what my solution is about.

the evolution of the darth vader & storm trooper portraits

This post is a continuation of the one I did last week about the Leia and Luke portrait paintings.