Bookin’ it

I’m in the studio today beginning to design…sketch…the 32 pages in a children’s book called, Tiny Goes to the Movies.  The cover art is already done.  It is done

first so that the book publisher can begin advertising that this book will be coming out in the future.  I did not put the name of the story on yet.  Looks like this…

But now, comes the “thinking part”.  Sketching with a pencil and my imagination.

When you open a book, what ever 2 pages you see, these are called a “spread”.  This book has 14 spreads to draw. And like a river, they need to flow together in

order to tell the story visually.  A very good author named Cari Meister Kurst wrote the simple sentences for this book.  This book is for someone who is just

learning to read…and is trying to read their first book by themself.  So the words need to be pretty simple and the pictures need to go with the words really well.

In the first spread of the book, the boy is telling you about himself and his big dog Tiny.  It’s summer time and my picture needs to tell those words.  The picture

needs to also say that these two have a very fun, warm friendship…they do a lot together.

When I read these words, my imagination saw this…

This is called a “rough” sketch….I’m not trying to be exact and perfect with my picture.  I just want to get down the general idea and how it would fit on the spread.

Once I do this, if I like it (which I did), then I take the rough to a tight “sketch”.  Looks like this…

And when I’m done with this stage of the book, I will have 14 spreads like this to show to the editor of the book in New York.

If she likes my ideas and sketches, then I will make paintings exactly like the sketch I sent them.

The cover painting that is at the top was a sketch at one time and went through this same process.

Back to work!

Advertisement