Friday 23 September 2011

Baby Can.... Get Back to Work


I struggled to get going this week, taking an age to finish off this piece, which was virtually done at the end of last week. I think I had lost a bit of momentum: I hate it when something sits on my desk for too long.


But after the fun and games of the weekend, followed immediately by a day of school visits in Nottingham (part 2 of a Greenaway Shadowing project), I've really had to get my head down and get on with the final bits of artwork for Baby Can Bounce. The deadline of Oct 1st is scarily imminent.

I've had this Baby Can Crawl piece on the desk for ages too:


But at last, come Wednesday afternoon, they were both sorted and I could start something fresh. 

There were only two pages left to do, plus the cover. I decided to do Baby Can Wave next. It's the final page of the book:


It was originally just Rhino and Cuckoo's page, but we decided to stuff it with lots of the other characters, to make it more of a full-on goodbye. Which meant that, to do the artwork, I needed to tack loads of different bits of completed artwork all over my desk, to use as colour reference:


Once this is done it's just Baby Can Bounce, which I've had to leave until last, because of it's connection to the front cover, which has yet to be decided.

Right: less of this chitter-chatter and more drawing!

3 comments:

Jac said...

Hi Lynne,
I love your blog and especially your work. Your characters are fantastic!!!...so colourful, fun, engaging and full of life! Seeing the development of "Baby Can Bounce" has been marvelous and very inspirational.

I must thank you, your blog and films on your website are so informative and have been teaching me alot about the process an illustrator goes through to publish a book and about the workings of the industry it's self.

I studied pre-foundation & display design many years ago at art college but had always wanted to go into illustration but had thought my work was not good enough. Having injured my back after spending many years in retail interior design whilst selling portraits and caricatures on the side i decided to try to re-train.

Last year i completed a home study course in illustration (Unfortually i could not afford to go back to art college to study fulltime). I have spent this last year working on my portfolio. I still have my website, marketing and a some dummy books i'd like to put together from my own storyline idea's before i am ready to approach either an agent or publishers.

Please may i ask is there any advice you would give an aspiring illustrator that you wish you'd know when you first started out?

Kind regards
Jac Holmes

P.S Apologises if my display name comes up as "Rat" it's my family nickname which my brother set up and i haven't yet figured out how to change the setting for it.

Lynne the Pencil said...

Hi Jac - great to hear that you are getting stuff together and are nearly ready to start approaching publishers.

If you hit the 'hot tips' tab on the blog-side, then scroll down through older posts, you will find a series of articles designed specifically for people in your position. They guide you through preparing a folio, making first contact with publishers, designing publicity etc and give you an idea of what to expect from the meetings and how to follow-up.

Good luck!

Jac said...

Hi Lynne,
Brilliant thank you ever so much. Very interesting and useful articles will help me enormously to prepare myself.

I love "Baby Can Bounce" front cover, the little spider finishes it off beautifully. Can't wait to see finished book will certainly buying it for my little nephew.

Kind Regards
Jac