Visualising New Stories

Sorry my posts have been a little thinner on the ground since Christmas, but I've been really busy. 

Do you remember that John and I were generating new stories together at the end of the year? We have several on the go, most with the texts more or less sorted. I will be visiting publishers with them next month, but still have lots to do, getting them ready. Experience has taught me that I have a far greater chance of success if I do a fair bit of visualisation, rather than present the text alone: it turns out that editors can't see inside my head, to the pictures inside...

As you can see from the way I'm wrapped up, it's sometimes chilly in the studio right now. There is currently snow on the Velux window above my head and, first thing in the mornings, I often draw in fingerless gloves because the surface of my desk is so cold!

It's mostly just pencil sketching at this stage, doing my best to capture my characters and draw the humour I see arising from their situations. There's no real point in creating coloured work until I have a publisher involved although, if there's time, I might do a pastel character sketch or two: on the whole it's the characters that really sell a story.

I don't want to jinx things by showing my cards before I have pitched the projects to publishers so, unfortunately, I haven't anything for you to look at yet. It's going well though.

Anyway, best get back to work. Tempus fugit...