Monday 12 September 2011

Illustrating a Picture Book: Crocodiles, Koalas and Lambs with Umbrellas



My little croc digging holes on the beach for Baby Can Bounce! is finished:


It proved slightly trickier, because none of the other illustrations have backgrounds, but this one clearly had to have a certain amount of sand for it to make sense. It still had the match the others, though, so a full beach was out. I think this will work: I'm envisaging it ultimately sitting on the yellow background colour we used for the koalas in book 1, so it blends.


The idea is, if possible, to keep the colour palette the same as book 1, or very similar, so they work as a pair as much as possible.

Today I am working on the artwork for the koala character as it happens. In the sequel he's illustrating 'Baby can crawl'. He was originally going to illustrate 'Baby can copy' (which, between you and I, I think is funnier):


Actually, during my first round of roughs, this page didn't feature the koala at all, but the lamb:


I swapped them over, as the lamb worked better than the koala on a different page: 'Baby can splash' needed a character will long enough arms to hold the umbrella in front whilst still remaining visible behind it:


I'm not entirely sure why, but my editor at Egmont wasn't keen on the concept 'copy', so I finally changed it to 'Baby can crawl'

Phew!


Right, colouring-in here we go...

6 comments:

ANAIS G. BURGOS said...

Ohhhhh....Love their expression of love :)
Fantastic, Lynne, as usual ;-)
Xxx

RuthieAppleby said...

I was so happy to find your site..my son is a graphic designer and he just had to read a children's book for class. Great work here :)_ Ruthie

Lynne the Pencil said...

Thanks AnAis.
Hope your son's reading went well Ruthie!

Anonymous said...

Love the Edinburgh Festival sketches, especially the ones of your fellow train passengers. Observing people is endlessly fascinating, isn't it? Do you find that people notice you're drawing them? Do they mind?

I'm also loving the "Baby can..." drawings. I have a real soft spot for the "baby can kiss" fox. Despite being terrified of real-life spiders, I like the little red arachnid that keeps popping up. It reminds me -- very losely
-- of the funny little background characters that would turn up in Frank Muir's "What-a-mess", one of my favourite books as a child.

Helen

Ben said...

Been meaning to leave a comment for ages to say we are reading our 2 and a half year old Class Two at the Zoo about three times a day and he absolutely loves it thanks to your wonderful illustrations! Thanks!

Lynne the Pencil said...

Thanks Ben - that's lovely to hear. So glad he enjoys it - it was one of my faves to illustrate. x