Messy. Rough. Imperfect. Process work.
I love seeing inside other people’s brains, so I thought I’d share a glimpse of mine. I’ve been taking a course with SVS’s called ChildrensBookPro, where they take you through the process of illustrating a picture book. I have a few stories of my own that I’m comfortable smooshing around, so I decided to illustrate one of them. Over the next few days I’ll share some what I’ve been working on for the last few weeks.
First up, pagination. I went through my story and roughly decided where I wanted my spreads to be.
Cool thing I’ve learned: if I break up my pictures page by page, I create a lot of isolated pictures. If I break them up by spreads (the 2 pages you see at a time when you open the book), there is a LOT more room for the story to flow, and for brain space to think about patterns and page turns. So that’s what I did.
Another cool thing: If I write the story, and I don’t like how it’s flowing for illustrating, then I can change it. Also, if I discover my descriptive writing is unnecessary since my pictures will cover it, I can chop out the extra stuff — and this story got chopped a LOT. I just get to play in my own sandbox for now, and it’s a great way to learn!
