Anxiety.

Last years work.

I've been painting for a week, so I've made progress on one book: painted all the clothes and some other stuff, then the skin. Now I've compared it to the work from the last books, and it doesn't look as good. I had some suspicion, but I thought it was just that they look weak until they are outlined. So I compared to the drawings from last year (not the books, but the drawings, which look 300% better than the books, not that I want to boast, I'm just disappointed at how much gets lost in scanning and reproduction processes) and the verdict on my current work is bad: my skin tones are heavy and flat, my shading is crude, and I haven't been as careful mixing the colours.

Current work.

Allowing for the difference in the scan quality and lack of outlining, you can sort of still see inferior painting evident in the below example of today's work compared to last years better work. There's a bit of a test there as well, I'm wondering if I can photoshop the skin into a better tone, which does sort of work. Otherwise, I may start again, and just lose a week.

I think I've gotten complacent and lazy. Last time I was so insecure about illustrating actual books that I really laboured over them, but now I'm already an illustrator, so I must be good at it.

So I have to stop and think about it for a little while, go on to other stuff. It's partly also to do with work cycles I think, to use a hormone analogy. This is the PMS stage of the project where I've sunk my normal confidence, I think I'm fat (untalented), I have no perspective (everything looks terrible) my life (work) is crap and boring and I want to take a day off (a day off). Just need to let the cycle move on. I'm sure in a week it will all be better.

In other news, today my entry in ABC 702 Sculpture by the Desk was judged today and won equal first People's Choice! With 5 votes! Thankyou, staff of Matthias Media, and thankyou 5th voter who doesn't work with me.

Wet Paint!

Today I wet the paper! This is my workspace: the office kitchen. You can see I spread out, and I have a lot of things. Paint, piles of paper, glass of water to wash brushes, paper towel to dry and clean up messes, digital radio to listen to 2CH and James Valentine and WSFM PLUS Billy Joel month, water to drink, books to check work against.

This is my actual painting in progress. I have been angsting for weeks about what colour dress for Emily, since I'm avoiding pink and I've already used red and purple, and the boys are always wearing blue so it's all a bit too much blue. Today I had a brainwave: orange. I made a bit of a mistake and put red frills on it, I think it should have been all orange. But it still looks very cute with the pink stripy leggings!

And this is my plate of colours. This plate is often used for eating cake off. I've decided to leave all the skin tones till last, so that I can keep it more consistent. It's hard enough remixing strong colours, but subtle colours can vary so easily, and I think I did some correcting in photoshop last time. Hooray for technology! Nothing is lost (well, if not Nothing, at least most things can be clone stamped, retrieved or hacked from a pdf).

Filling up the nice paper.

I came to work on Thursday to start putting drawings on watercolour paper. I print out my layout sketches, which have been touched up where things are the wrong size or in the wrong place. I blue tack a draft page onto the window in Grimmos old office, and trace onto the watercolour paper on top of it. It's a pov sort of light-box, because the blood drains out of my arms! You can't see through the watercolour paper to trace without light, because it is too thick.

So I just finished tracing the last sketches for The Birthday Party today with a little friend watching me. I don't have my camera to show you a pile of drawings but this is an example of what is on each page.

A neat pencil outline. Pretty dull. It is one of the more awkward drawings, because it's busy, and it was a challenge to draw a child squatting (I draw always from my head, but in this case I had to find some photo examples on the web of squatting children to get some clues, but the right age child from the right angle was hard to find so it's still a lot imagined and it only just works).

I don't like drawing stuff. I like drawing people, particularly cute little kids and especially their feet, but I don't like drawing rooms, walls, furniture, toys. Gardens I don't mind as much. I think the trouble with furniture and stuff is perspective and people have to interact with them. It is much easier to have people in white space. Which looks good, anyway, and we are trying to avoid giving away too much in terms of wealth and class. I think in terms of Kmart, not Myer or DJs, and not too aspirational.

So that is why you have a lot of bare feet and not much furniture.

Draft colours.

Yesterday I coloured in clothes. Just a bit of fun. But better than leaving it till I'm painting, because if I use a colour on one person and then realise I should have saved it for another person, it's very annoying. Red is the most special colour, and everyone wants to wear it.

I can never think of anything for the Dad or the boy to wear that isn't boring. Girls and babies are easy, even if you limit the pink, and the Mum just wears what I wear. I've given Dad a red polo shirt, but I think I'll switch it to navy blue wide stripes. Stripes are easier to paint than blocks of colour, because big areas of paint can be blotchy and uneven (I hate grass) and stripes also add contours. And I noticed at Summer School that wide horizontal stripes are popular with middle aged people.

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.