Tuesday 2 September 2008

Working On The Scans


How annoying it is to have a lovely, sunny day at last, and have to pull all the blinds down, but I can't see the computer screen as well with the sun streaming in.

Remember I told you that the DVD containing all the scanned artwork from my current project Dragon's Dinner had arrived from the publisher last week (see An Artwork Day)? Well, now I've finished the other bits and bobs I had to do, my next job is to do the 'finishing' work. That means going through the digital versions of my illustrations one by one, firstly checking for any anomalies or smudges, and touching up anything I'm unhappy with.

Then I knock out any pink backgrounds, using Photoshop (remember my pink paper? see Tracing Up The Cover of Dragon's Dinner). This means we can later choose different colour backgrounds to drop in, like this. I don't have to do this 'finishing' stage, the designer does it for most people, but I like to do it myself as it's a bit more tricky than usual, because of the pastels. I have to be careful to preserve the uneven chalk edges on objects, and the dappled pastel texture of shadows etc. If you look at this close up of the dragon's ear, you can see what I mean. Fortunately there are some very clever tools in Photoshop that make this possible. How did we cope before computers!?!


Unfortunately, I noticed straight away that there is a problem: the scans have small faults in them - tiny lines running vertically through the images in places. I phoned my designer at Hodder, Jennifer Stephenson, and we decided I would try and touch them up on the computer, to save the delay of having to send them back to be done all over again.

Luckily, that seems to be going ok. There are an awful lots of images to work my way through though, so I suppose I'd better get on with it. At least little Maddy is allowed back in now (see Cats and Pastels Don't Mix!), so she has been sitting on my lap this morning, while I work. Oh, and it also seems to be raining now - hurrah!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Lynne - I love the blog, it's really interesting finding out how it's done!

I hope you don't think this too cheeky, but is it possible to buy your books from you, so you can sign them?

Lynne the Pencil said...

Not cheeky at all!

Yes, if you go to my website www.lynnechapman.co.uk you will see a link from the homepage all about ordering signed books. And I will draw an illustration in them too.

Glad you like the blog!

Croom said...

Hi Lynne

Lovely blog again. I love finding out how you do your illutrations, hopefully from the start to the finished book :O)
Tina

granny grimble said...

So interesting as per usual! I'm learning things about your work that I didn't know about before.

Lynne the Pencil said...

It's good top hear that you're finding it interesting. I hoped people would but you can never be sure!

Babs (Beetle) said...

Now I am very interested to find out which tool is it that you knock the background out and leave all the tiny details behind with :O)

Lynne the Pencil said...

Aha - in that case I'll post the answer as a new post, in case anyone else is interested.

Watch this space...

granny grimble said...

That's good because I was going to ask the same question. Everytime I do it, it always insists on taking out that small detail that it's imperative I leave in place. Very frustrating!