Break it down.

I've been working on other things like our 2011 resource guide, and been on holidays. I'm going to start the proper paintings soon. 45-odd illustrations are a little bit intimidating... they're starting to loom. So today I'm taking a small step, and finding out how much paper I have, and where my brushes are.

1. Find materials.
2. Trace draft sketches onto nice paper, finishing any details I left out.
3. Watercolour everything, except skin tones.
4. Skin tones.
5. Pencil around illustrations again.

Full page sketches.

Then I draw full size sketches. I finished them yesterday! We are a little bit ahead of schedule.

Then I scan them in and put them in the layout to make sure the words fit in the space in the picture, and everything looks OK. This is the InDesign layout of the book with the draft sketch placed in.

I often use photoshop to fix a picture. I can cut things out and move them around on screen so that if someone's arm is too long I don't have to go back to drawing and rubbing out.

Layout magic.

Now we are about to catch up to real time drawing!

When we did the first two books we worked out the production process as we went along, so it was pretty hard. We just didn't know what we were doing, how to actually make a childrens book. Fitting words and pictures together is tricky, let alone that the format changed and pages were added after I had already sketched all the pages for one story. Anyway, now we know what the format is and now we have a system for producing them to minimise having to redraw or rewrite when something has already been worked on.

First the story is written and edited, then we have a meeting—author, illustrator and publishing director—to talk about changes. For example, I found with the first books that a lot of dialogue in a big chunk is hard to illustrate interestingly. Things might need to be written with a more careful mind to the illustrated pages.

Stephanie and I then break the text up into pages. We note down where an illustration could be a full spread, where a page-turn is needed for suspense, etc etc, and spread it out over 21 pages.

Then I draw thumbnails while Stephanie helps say what the illustrations will be. This is a good part, because we think very much the same! When I draw something she usually says "That's what I was imagining it to look like!" so it's very easy. Here are some thumbnails. I try and take into account the space needed for the text. You can see the top right one, that's a spread: two page illo. The bottom right is a full page on the left and a spot illo on the right—some objects isolated.

So these thumbnails become the plan for the bigger sketches. They also bring up problems (eg. too much to fit on a page) before I do any real work.

Family proportions.

I was VERY concerned that I kept drawing the children too old. It's hard to be consistant. Feedback from Stephanie was that I was adding 3 years to Luke and Emily, and I was making the baby too much of a baby. So she took some photos of families from church to show me the relative sizes. Then I drew a version of our book family. I scanned it in and used photoshop to adjust their proportions, mainly leg length.

Mum   Ben   Emily   Luke   Dad

From this, I made some coloured rulers in InDesign, so that when I was putting my drawings into the layout I could also check if the relative heights were correct. And then I also had to constantly remember to make Luke and Emily's legs and arms short, so that they looked little. Fat tummies also make kids look young! A few years older and they get much lankier.

And this drawing is pretty much how they look in the books. The end size of the books meant that the drawings are quite small, so the simpler illustration style of this sketch is basically how I ended up drawing the finished scenes. All my lead-up was too detailed and too big. Drawing it smaller like this forced me to simplify, especially the faces: just dots and spots. I find the hardest part of the face to draw is the bit between the nose and the top lip, so at this size I don't have to draw it at all!

Coloured portrait.

Eventually I had to go to colours, and although I haven't done much watercolour, it seemed the most appropriate style: a lot of control and subtlety. Actually, I had no idea if I would be able to do decent watercolour or not, I just hoped I could! So I painted this, which took half or most of a day I think. It was the big test of my illustration technique, because the books probably wouldn't go ahead unless my illustrations looked professional.

The main breakthrough was outlining. Instead of using a black artline pen, I used pencil: black and grey. It meant I got variation in line weight, more control, less overpowering outlines, and I could rub stuff out—rather than ruining a lovely bit of watercolour with an inky black line in the wrong place.

I've since discovered, doing the last Christmas cards, that it's easier with a super fine pen, like a 0.1 mm. So different to a 0.4 artline. But I still don't feel safe with ink, there is no undoing it!

Character sketches.

I thought it would be handy to have some "portraits" so that I could draw from them. Babies and children are different shapes to adults, in the face and body. So I drew the different characters a few times to get used to drawing different ages, and to have some references. The more I drew, the better I got, because of practice.

Not very good Emily

Better Emily with practice faces at different angles

Baby brother Todd/Ben

Older brother Luke

Dad and Mum

I did a series of portraits of all the family. Some things I started working out at this stage:

• Eye-shaped eyes don't look as good as just dots and eyebrows. 
• The shorter the arms and legs are, the younger the child looks.
• I like drawing feet.
• I'm trying to make them look messy and casual. It's hard to go against my instinct to make everyone beautiful, but I tried to make the Dad have a bit of a tummy and a receding hairline, the mum look mum-shaped, the kids chubby.
• I've figured out that I should draw hair in big chunky outlines. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't at all.
• I have to draw Emily's body first and then draw her dress over the top and then rub out her body.
• Stripes look really cute. Lots of Bonds-style striped clothing.

My particular favourites.

I worked out the drawing style for these books with two illustrators as inspiration: Shirley Hughes and Freya Blackwood.

I love how modern and subtle Freya Blackwood's work is, and how people are half real half simplified. I later used her watercolour style as my guide to watercolouring—she's a lot better than me, but better trained and more devoted, so it's only fair. Oh, I wish I could draw like her.

I read some Shirley Hughes when I was little. I love how she fills her pages with childish details: grubby hands, frowns of concentration, pants falling down, wind-blown hair. She has a very unique style I have no hope of attempting!

I also used the photography on pumpkinpatch as a guide for little kid's proportions, at this stage. I was really working things out from a very basic level. I don't draw much so I didn't have a "style" ready to go.