I mentioned recently that I had been wrapping up illustrations for a children's book which I have been working on most of this past year. This project has been a labor of love and one of my favorite projects to date. It is published by Eerdman's Books for Young Readers and the title is Hidden City. A release date is yet to be determined as the book is being finalized.
This is the first of a series of sneak peeks and posts about the process I used in illustrating this book leading up to it's release. Eerdman's is a dream publishing house to work with. At every turn they are so supportive to the illustrator's process and have come back with thoughtful and intelligent feedback. It has been a true creative collaboration. The book is a collection of image rich poems written by Sarah Tuttle about nature hidden in urban environments. To tell you this has been fun to illustrate would be an understatement!
Here are a couple of sketches and the progress to full color. I am just showing cropped illustrations, not the full page illustrations yet.
This first illustration is a poem about bats hunting moths at night under a streetlamp. Here are my pencil sketches that I scanned into my computer.
In the past I would not have described myself as a big sketcher. I would typically dive into the color illustrations and work things out intuitively as I proceed. With this book I sketched a lot and tried out different ideas, layouts, characters, etc. Once I had things worked out in pencil, I stuck fairly closely to my sketches for the color work. I wanted to focus on character, story, and atmosphere in each spread. I like to pose a question at the beginning of each book project that gets to the heart of what I am trying to say. For this book, I asked myself.... "Do you want to live in this illustration?" And of course, if the answer was not yes, it was back to the drawing board, literally.
I also spent a lot of time collecting...references, materials, papers, textures. I made a folder for each poem. I also kept a notebook with all of my ideas regarding colors, textures, and perspectives that would best illustrate the feelings that each poem evoked. I also tried to tap into our shared childlike curiosity,enthusiasm, and wonder when we are surrounded by natural beauty, especially in urban settings.
Another poem is about a mother raccoon teaching its young to hunt. This wound up being one of my favorite illustrations in the book, both to draw and also seeing how it turned out when I was done.
Here are a couple of little fellas in pencil and full color.
We wound up changing the scene from a city park to a back alley behind a restaurant. It worked out so much better than the original vision I had which I had strong feelings for. There is a lot to be said about letting go and staying open as I mentioned, it has become one of my favorite illustrations in the book. And it stretched me as an illustrator. I can't wait to show you the full spread!
Stay tuned for more posts about Hidden City as we get closer to a release date.
