Tuesday 24 September 2013

Illustrating a Picture Book: 5 Day Artwork Marathon!


After just over 5 days, I finally got the most complex piece of artwork in The Jungle Grumble finished. Here it is on my drawing board, along with the half-finished lion spread I set aside last week:


I generally spend 2 days on a spread, 3 days if I'm still warming up, or it's a bit fiddly, so 5 was pretty hard-going for me:


I had to pause before the final day's work and do a few sketches, to work out how to contruct the changing-room door (the publisher requested I do it differently from my original rough). I wanted it to be as visually simple as possible, so didn't want us to be able to see inside, so I went for banana leaves lashed / nailed to a branch, which you could push to one side to enter (a bit like those thick, plastic strips in a factory):


If you didn't read my last post, you might be interested to see how I built up this very complicated illustration, a little at a time. By the way, for anyone who wants to watch me create a piece of my pastel artwork, there is a film on my YouTube channel, from when I created my last book, Swap!.

4 comments:

ann @ studiohyde said...

That sounds like a lot of work! Love your solution to the changing room door, what a great idea.

Elli Maanpää said...

I love seeing progress photos of creating illustrations so thank you for blogging about your progress! And the finished works look super cute and fun as always.

Lynne the Pencil said...

You#re welcome - thank you :-)

theartofpuro said...

How many details,you did a great work:)Thanks for sharing.