Illustrating a Picture Book: Creating the Roughs

Hurrah - all done in time and emailed off to the publisher!

All those very tiny thumbnails I showed you earlier were scanned and enlarged in Photoshop to 75% of the actual book size:

I then used print-outs of these as a guide, to help me draw everything again, reworking the compositions and correcting mistakes where needed. You can just see the enlarged thumbnail showing through my layout paper:

It was also at this stage that I was adding the new characterisation to each animal, as I went along. 

The finished pencil drawings were then re-scanned and enlarged to actual size, then taken back into Photoshop for last-minute tweaks and scale adjustments, as well as the fine-tuning of the text placement. 

When I was doing the original thumbnails, this was the spread I was most nervous about. I left it to the very end, because there were so many animals to try and fit in it: not just the 10 featured ones, but sundry others to act as the audience:

I had to find a way, not just to squeeze everyone in, but also to show off their various 'swaps' in a way that let you see everything clearly, to avoid visual confusion (whilst still remembering not to put anyone's face anywhere near the page gutter). Nightmare! Only, actually, when it came to it, I managed okay. Maybe because I had warmed up on the rest of the book.

The one that was redrawn the most in the end, was this one, which at first glance looks the most straight-forward:

I'll tell you why next time - you'll just have to wait!