How to use this Page

Christina Forshay was born and raised in sunny California, where she lives with her amazing husband and the two cutest kids in the world!

Of course, as a child she could be found drawing, coloring and admiring her grand collection of crayons.

Christina graduated from California State University Long Beach with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration in 2002. Since then, she has been proudly working as an illustrator for the children’s market.

Cover of Christina’s book titled, The Really Groovy Story of the Tortoise and the Hare (Albert Whitman & Sons, 2011)

Here is Christina’s Process with her new book:

So, the first step to working on the first picture book I illustrated, The Really Groovy Story of the Tortoise and the Hare, (Albert Whitman & Sons, 2011) was to read through the manuscript and jot down some initial notes and ideas. I was also sent a PDF from the art director of the layout of the book that had the text and some notes for each spread. That made it somewhat easier for me, as figuring out where the page turns will go seems to be half of the initial battle in terms of the flow and continuity of a picture book. I printed out the pdf in a smaller format and cut and paste the pages to form a miniature version of the book so that I would have something tactile to hold, and pages to turn. I kept this right in front of me on my desk every day. This really helped me along the way to bridge the gap between the written word and how I envisioned the final book would look .

After a few days spent mulling over the manuscript, gathering my thoughts and creating small, scribbly sketches, I began working on character design and development for the two main characters. Here is one of first pages I sent the art director of how I envisioned the hare.

The Art Director thought he needed to head in a more “hip and cosmopolitan” direction, so I trolled the internet looking for inspiration. I sent Nick (the Art Director) this image I found on a certain “hip” clothing store’s website and he agreed that this was the direction we should go.

So, that is how we ended up with the final look for Hare.

Once the character designs were finalized, it was time to move to the sketches for the spread. Though I work digitally for the final paintings these days, my sketches are mostly done pencil on paper and then scanned in.

I started very small on a sheet of paper with thumbnail size sketches that are approximately 1” by 2” each. These thumbnails are proportionally correct in size to the final artwork size. As you can see, these are super messy, but contain the essential large shapes and fig