Drawing Cats

I have spent much of this week revising a story I was working on late last year. Remember, I took the train to London to pitch it in person to publishers? Well, I had a very positive response from one editor, who made a couple of suggestions for additions, before she takes it to their acquisitions meeting, which is where she must pitch it in turn, to the rest of her team.

The story features a little gang of doggy friends, who play together in an alley. The action also brings in a neighbouring gang of rats. The editor felt it would really help the fun if the local cats also got involved. This seemed like a great idea, so I've been designing some characters. They are, of course, supremely unimpressed by the dogs:

Ideally, I'd have liked to have done this before now, but things were very busy in the run-up to Christmas, getting Baby Can Bounce finished. Then of course, John and I were lucky enough to have a our lovely long break in India... So, before I knew it, it was the middle of January! 

All the new drawings and the re-plotting was done on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday was spent scanning the new additions into Photoshop, along with the original sheets of sketches, notes and the handwritten text which I took to London in November. These were fine with me there to present them, but I needed to slightly reorder things and tidy them all up a little, to make it easier for my editor to show the sheets to other people without me present. 

It now comes out at 6 sheets of A3. I haven't illustrated everything - I don't think that's necessary at this stage - but there is a sketch for all the important events and characters.

Let's hope she still likes it!