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I had a bit of a time, trying to get the first spread of Class One Farmyard Fun finished off. It was SO fiddly. Unfortunately, there are quite a few spreads in the book with this level of complexity (I have only myself to blame, since I designed them!). Fiddly and pastels do not go very well together, so my pastel pencils had to be brought into the action quite a bit. The pencils are great for detail, but the colour is not as rich and dense as the pastel sticks, so I then have to go over the top of the pencil elements with regular pastel, to give it oomph, trying not to blob where I don't need it.
Yep, a nightmare, and very slow, but worth it in the end:
The other tricky thing is keeping track of who's who with the children in the class. There are so many of them, all with different complexions, hair colour and outfits, it will be very easy to get them mixed up along the way. So I added little colour swatches to my 'crib sheet' - the original sketch-sheet where I designed the various children. I can use this as an aide memoir on my desk, as I work my way through all the artwork.
I was working until 7pm on Saturday night, despite having a nasty cold (pause for violins...), because I was desperate to get this first spread finished, before I started Book Week and had to stop work until March 7th, because of being out every day in schools.
I just got done in time and, on Sunday afternoon, I headed down to Bedford, ready for Monday's school event at Cotton End Primary. Since the school is near to where Julia Jarman lives, John and I drove down and stopped overnight with her, which was lovely (thanks Julia!). Every day of this week has been a different place - I've been zipping all over. It's always the busiest week of the year. Back to normal and making a start on my next spread on Monday.
Okay, much though I personally hate the whole Black Friday bonkers shopping thing, it turns out that there is an very definite up side... (pause for drumroll)...
... because my Craftsy class is going to be offered at a special SALE PRICE for the whole weekend - hurrah! So, if you haven't got around to signing up yet (shame on you :-D ) here is the SUPER-DUPER BLACK FRIDAY SALE link to my illustration masterclass, which will teach you how to draw the most expressive and funny picture book characters. I make it easy. Promise.
Just think what an amazingly original Christmas present idea it would be for an arty friend. Or maybe just an early Christmas present for yourself (the best kind of present...). Go on, treat yourself...
Do you remember absolutely ages ago, I was telling you about how Julia Jarman and I often talk through her ideas for new picture book texts? Well, the text I was talking about was successful: it got contracted by the publisher, so we are off! The huge delay is entirely my fault, because I have had too much work on until now with my Sketching People book and my Craftsy workshop to be able to start the work.
It's called Class One Farmyard Fun and is a sequel to Class Two at the Zoo and Class Three all at Sea - both big favourites of mine and really good fun to illustrate, because of all the crazy things that happen on their ill-fated school trips out and about.
I'm really enjoying getting stuck into this new one. I started with characterisation, as always. All this series feature an entire class, so my first job was playing around, designing lots of different kids:
It's important that they are all different and suggest different personalities, like any real class of five year olds. They'll evolve a little I'm sure, as I draw, but I was very pleased with my first efforts.
I went on to have a think about the teacher. It's a woman again. This was my initial sketch sheet, trying things out. I've gone for the person on the far right:
I wanted to make her kind (she's always a touch incompetent in the stories, but never a nasty teacher). The teachers in primary schools are usually pretty young too. It was important to make her different to the other two class teachers, in Class Two and Class Three though:
I am now waiting for the designer at Hodder to send me a set of page layouts. They will chop Julia's story up into spreads and set the font size and style, so I know how much text I need to work around on each page. In the meantime, I am itching to get going, so have played around with one or two scenareos from the story. This introduces the bull, who is going to be the source of all the trouble!
Julia came to visit us last week, which was lovely. She was doing an event in a Sheffield school, so she came to stop at our house the night before. She was of course desperately curious to see what I had been up to. Luckily, she loved the drawings - phew!
This weekend is your last chance to take advantage of my special half-price deal, celebrating the launch of my online illustration workshop. This little trailer shows you the kind of thing I cover in the 7 lessons:
I am thrilled to bits with how it's recruiting and I already have two really lovely 5-star reviews on the class. Here are highlights from what my new students had to say:
"This is a terrific course. Lynne Chapman is an excellent teacher who knows how to make it seem easy and fun to draw. I am a retired illustrator, and I've been rather stuck in my ways of doing things but I have enjoyed learning Lynne's approach and it is giving me new inspiration. This is carefully planned and well presented. I recommend it. A five star course for artists young and old."
" Lynne is so clear to listen to and really helpful. The homework seems really doable and the accumulated knowledge is applicable to all kinds of illustration regarding a younger audience"
Thank you guys for that smashing feedback. I'm so glad it the class is coming across so well!
So, click this link and you will get the class for 50% of the regular price. After tomorrow night, the link will still be there, but the discount will be reduced to $10 off. Have fun!!
Today is the day!! My Craftsy master-class, teaching you how to draw children's book characters, just went live, slightly ahead of schedule! To celebrate, you can get the class half price for the rest of this week from this blog post. Yep - Craftsy allow me to discount the class if I want. So what better time?
Last week I got a sneak preview of how it looks and am absolutely delighted with the way it's turned out. The editing guys have done a smashing job, splicing all the material together. There's me talking (okay, nothing new there says John...), plus all the various drawing demos that we filmed, lots of illustrations from my books, as well as various extra drawing tips with bits and bobs of graphics.
Plus, Craftsy's clever, techy guys have had to build the whole background platform, because the workshop is not just a series of films. Oh no...
After each lesson, I set my students a homework project to do. Then, when they're done, they can post their work onto a gallery, for me and the other students to see. Great eh? Plus students can even ask me questions, if there's anything they need more help with.
Huge CONGRATULATIONS to Tami T, who was the winner of my prize draw. Well done Tami! Have fun. I look forward to seeing your characters :-)
If you were unlucky, don't worry: all is not lost! Craftsy classes are very reasonably priced but if you are on a tight budget, get in quick while mine is super-duper-brilliant-value with my launch-week deal...
The other brilliant thing about the workshop is that it does not have an expiry date. You can watch it as many times as you like, for as long as you want - once you sign up, everything is yours for good. And because you only need a pencil and paper, once you have signed up, it's not going to cost you anything extra at all.
I have tried really hard to pack all 7 of the lessons with tons of tips which should really help your character drawings, both of animals and people, but I've also done my best to make it a fun workshop to do.
Please do let me know what you think. As this is my first venture of this kind, I'd really like to hear your feedback.
Guess what?! To celebrate the launch of my on-line illustration workshop, the one I filmed recently in Denver with Craftsy, I am running a competition. Hurrah! I'm giving away a free subscription to my 7-lesson master-class on How to Illustrate Children's Book Characters.
It's a prize-draw. All you have to do is click this link and you will be entered. Easy-peasy. When the class launches on October 19th, one person will be picked at random to get the workshop for free.
The 7 lessons take you through everything I could think of that you need to know for creating believable human and animal characters for your illustrations: I crammed in everything I have learnt over the years for you.
We go through lots of tips to show you easy ways to sketch various basic characters as well as how to get across different ages, by playing around with various proportions:
I also demonstrate simple devises for creating different personalities, by varying the positions of facial features, in combination with different head shapes:
I show you how to make characters walk and run, and how to add different facial expressions to communicate more about what's happening:
In one lesson, we look at how you can use clothing and props to tell people more about what your characters are doing and who they are:
We had a lot of fun filming a lesson on how to communicate emotion. At home in my studio, I often act things out in a mirror, to work out the best body-language to use. Clif, my producer, thought it would be good to actually do this on set, so we stole the huge mirror from my dressing room and set it up on an easel in the studio:
I then had to do my acting out in front of the camera (!), playing at being angry, sad, scared etc. before transferring the positions to different character sketches. It took us ages to work out the best way to film it, so we wouldn't see the cameras in the mirror, not to mention the big battery pack I had tucked under my skirt (does my bum look big in this...).
So, this is actually me, being terrified:
At the end of each section, I give you homework tasks, to help you practice what we have been doing and you can then post your work for me to see. You can even ask questions.
I had a lot of fun creating the class and I am hoping it will be a lot of fun to do. By the end, you should be able to create pretty much any character you fancy. But better than that: you will be able to make them feel 'real' (even if they are a crocodile in a dressing gown and slippers), because you will learn how to communicate what they are thinking and feeling too.
So, don't forget to enter the free giveaway draw - you never know. But don't worry, even if you are not the lucky one, I will be giving away discounts in the first couple of weeks, so watch this space!
I am so excited. I can't wait to see how it's turned out!
Fans of the little videos John and I occasionally make for my YouTube channel, will be interested to hear of my latest venture. I confess, I am rather excited myself.
A few Urban Sketchers friends of mine, including the truly outstanding Paul Heaston, and Marc Holmes, have recently signed up to run on-line workshops for a company called Craftsy. Paul and Marc's lessons are excellent, as you would imagine (but if you want to sign up for them, do it via the artists' own websites, as that way they get more commission).
Craftsy classes are not just in urban sketching though: there are all sorts of things you can learn, including children's book illustration... See where this is going?
Yes, that's right - they have invited me to do a class on illustrating picture books, concentrating specifically on character design and development. Now, I really enjoyed making our studio-based films, but this is the real thing: the film will be shot over a 3 day period in a proper, real-life, film studio. And not just that... it's in the USA! Okay, so now you know why I am excited.
I have been stealing time where I can over the last week or so, to write down everything I can think of on character creation. It helps that I do a lot of illustration workshops in schools on this theme, as it can be hard sometimes, trying to remember the stuff that you know really well. My next job is to collate these ideas into Craftsy's specific lesson-plan structure.
Once that's done and has got the OK, I will work with a Content Editor to talk further about the specifics of how we turn those learning points into a filmed workshop (which specific characters I will draw as demos, what practical assignments I will set etc). When that's sorted out, I am assigned a Producer to work with, fine-tuning various practical elements of the project and the logistics of what needs to happen when. Apparently, we'll even be discussing my wardrobe (new dress needed..?)
Then comes the exciting bit: Craftsy are going to fly me out to where they are based, in Denver. I'm booked into the film studio for September 9th - 11th. Another adventure! I am doing rather well on that front just lately.
It's early stages and nothing much will happen for a while, as I have my other commitments to work on first, mainly my Urban Sketching People book, but I'll keep you posted (of course). Once the filming is done, there will be about 6 weeks of post-production editing before it's released. If all goes to plan, it sounds like we should have it ready to go live around the middle to end of October. Watch this space!
A while ago I mentioned a mural project that I am doing, based on children's drawings created during an illustration workshop, focussing on characterisation and movement. The wall I have to cover, at Wakefield Library, is over 13 metres long, but only 2 metres high - very long and thin - so the idea is to create a chase scene along it, as if the children's animals are running through the library.
I let the teachers take the drawings back to school with them, for the kids to finish off. Unfortunately, instead of posting them a couple of days later, as promised, it took them 6 weeks and repeated hassling, so I am only now getting down to it.
I am currently spending my time on Photoshop, trying to work out how to lay things out. It's so massive, and such a weird shape, I'm working on a one-tenth, low res mock-up, into which I have placed scans of all the animals, so I can move things around and re-size them, until it looks OK. Then I'll re-scan everything at the right size, as the final artwork will be created digitally (in sections and at one quarter size, so my computer doesn't blow its brain).
Although my initial chase idea sounded simple, I soon discovered that, if I don't want to end up with just a 'procession' of animals, in a long, uninteresting line, I will need to draw in incidental props, like bookshelves for animals to climb onto, or chairs for them to jump over. I might need to do some graphic things will colour in the background too (like I did with the cover of Swap!), to divide up the space. Not sure yet.
Right: back to it...
I finished off all the digital finishing-work, on the inside illustrations and on the cover for Swap! before the Easter holidays. It felt like I was nearly done. I thought I would be able to rattle off the endpapers and be ready to send it all off to the publisher pretty soon after getting back to work this week.
I don't know why I thought that: it was very silly.
 |
| front endpaper illustrations |
I wasn't really taking into account the fact that, not only are the illustrations different on the front and back endpapers, but there are six independent illustrations on each, every one of which is fiddly. Also every illustration features Lucy, whose head is a very similar pink to the pink of the paper I use, making it a bit of a technical nightmare to cut free.
 |
| back endpaper illustrations |
The illustrations will be put into a spot repeat pattern across the double spread of each endpaper:
I thought that, because the illustrations needed to be different - a sort of 'before and after' - I would use the same lilac coloured background for them both, to give some unity.
You can follow the progress of
Swap! (as well as
Baby Goes Baaaaa! and
Bears on the Stairs) from my first sketches and plotting sheets, through pitching the idea to publishers, creating artwork, as well as all the miriad issues that have arisen during the book's life so far, by clicking the
Swap! label, or other relevant label, on the right of the posts.
You can watch me create a piece of the original pastel artwork from
Swap! in a short film
here.
A rather unusual project has come my way...
Wakefield's central library is a brand new building (I did some storytelling to help celebrate the opening in November). There is a very long, very empty wall running through the children's library. It's supposed to be decorated with a mural. The mural was part of the original building contract, but the various designs offered were apparently awful and the librarian's rejected them all.
So, I got an email asking if I had any ideas. Everyone thought it would be a good idea to involve local children in some way, so I dedicated one of my long train journeys to giving it thought.
Which is why I was in Wakefield again this week.
I didn't really fancy painting onto the actual wall: that's very much out of my comfort zone, especially as it's over 12 metres long (!). Yikes.
My idea was to bring a couple of school groups into the library for illustration workshops and get them to draw (on paper) various animals chasing one another through the library (books flying everywhere, horrified librarians...). I would then take these home, scan in my favourites, and use Photoshop to combine them into one long, digital illustration, which I could simply send to a printer, to have made into panels, to attach to the wall.
Which all sounds kind of straightforward, doesn't it?. Hah! If only.
The workshops were the easy bit - they went really well and we had a lot of fun together. The children did some smashing illustrations, which they've taken back to school, to finish colouring in.
But, when the drawings come back next week, I have to play around, grouping them in different ways, designing the mural's layout. Which means I need to get the individual animals to a scale where I can move them around in a space the same shape as the actual wall. This is the tricky bit.
Even scaled right down, the wall is too long and thin to look at on the computer as a whole, but I don't have a real-life space anything like big enough to lay out the actual children's drawings on the floor. Hmmmm.....
Plus, even when I have somehow designed the mural and scanned in all the drawings, I'll need to create the final, digital artwork in several sections: even at one quarter size, the entire file will be so massive, it would crash the computer several times over!!
I'll let you know how things progress...
In the meantime, I hope you like these
watercolour pencil sketches, which I did on my way to Wakefield on Wednesday morning.
But I had yet another cause to put my pastel artwork on hold: a cover design was needed too. We often leave the cover design to the end - I am more familiar with the characters by then and it's easier to get a feel for what would work, once you can see the rest of the artwork.
Anyway, I needed to come up with something in a hurry. I felt both characters needed to be on the front, but nothing much else (apart from the title etc, obviously), to keep it punchy. I did the sketch above as a starting point, but felt it needed more humour, so thought I could use the dog food problem to make things more funny. The ice-cream seemed to work well for Sparky and I tried out 3 alternative versions of Lucy:
One fundamental problem though, is that two characters side by side create a very landscape-format illustration, for what is a portrait-format cover. That means they would ultimately be quite small in the space.
My Art Director suggested I move them closer together, having them hugging, which would help the format and also make it a warmer relationship.
Trouble is, Lucy has a very wide head, so she can't easily get close without eclipsing Sparky, and his long nose has to face away from her, or they'd collide. Plus, his school uniform begins to disappear behind her and it all gets a bit visually confusing.
'We need a more graphic approach,' said my Art Director. So I played with having the characters poking in top and bottom, using blocks of colour to hold them in place and break up the space. John suggested the curly shape below and the idea that the title letters could swap colours with the background shapes, to echo the theme.
Then I had another go at bringing the two characters together, keeping the colour-swapping idea, but using hand-holding instead of hugging. I also tried a slightly simpler version of John's idea then sent these three designs back to the Art Director.
She liked the third, simpler one best, but said it needed more humour, rightly pointing out that, unless you've read the story, Sparky could be just another animal wearing clothes, as they so often do in picture books: people might not get the 'swapping' idea and so Lucy's nose would just be confusing. She also preferred Sparky's ballet outfit to the school uniform.
I had deliberately shied away from using the ballet costume on the cover, since I discovered Dogs Don't Do Ballet: Sara Ogilvie unfortunately uses a very similar outfit. But the ballet costume did offer more scope for extra humour. I managed to squeeze Sparky's foot, with Lucy's tiny shoe, into the picture then looked on Google for other children's ballet accessories and found the tiara. Just to be on the safe side, I gave Lucy a bone, to underpin the idea that she is supposed to be in a dog disguise:
Both my Art Director and Editor loved it - hurrah!
The patchwork letters were another brain-wave of John's by the way, the idea being that they are another DIY activity, like the home-made nose. I think they make it really funky: well done John x
Do you ever have a task that you just can't seem to quite get finished? That's how I've been feeling about the two illustrations I've been working on for the last week.
Perhaps it's partly because I've had only the limited reference of the little dancing endpaper vignettes stuck to my desk, but I suppose it's mostly because they are both a bit fiddly.
The illustration above is Sparky telling Lucy that he won't swap back yet - he wants to have a go at ballet class (although clearly he's going to have trouble with those tiny shoes!). This is the rough I had a bit of trouble getting right. The publisher decided they liked this layout best.
The illustration below comes slightly later, after Sparky has been humiliated in class. Lucy is expecting him to want to swap back now (but she's in for a nasty surprise). If you're interested, I explained earlier on how I designed the drawing for this image.
I decided to work on the two pieces together, like earlier, as they featured the same characters, so it made it easier to keep them consistent, but also helped me to choose the colours of people's outfits, hair colour etc, having both contexts in front of me (I wanted to get a nice even balance of colours across both pictures).
At last I finished both illustrations on Monday, at 6.30pm - I was determined not to stop work until I had done. Still, after John mounted them up for me this morning, I noticed I had missed off Lucy's sock tail on the smaller piece, so had to quickly pop it on and I have just this minute noticed that Lucy's eyebrows are missing - she doesn't look smug enough without them!
Both these illustrations of Lucy also need some mud, from the earlier incident where she is digging holes in the garden, but I want to wait until the earlier pieces of artwork come back from the publishers, to make absolutely sure I put all the mud splodges in the right place.
Well, my Art Director rightly pointed out that we can't very well use the same design for the endpapers at the beginning of the book, because a) it will spoil the joke and b) nobody will understand what it's all about yet.
So I set about thinking up other, more normal activities that Sparky and Lucy could share. It took a while, as I wanted them to be either cute or funny or both. I also needed situations that didn't require either backgrounds or large props: making sandcastles at the beach was out, as was playing on the swings. I did adapt both the beach idea and the park though:
These are the others I've come up with. I had 6 ballet poses, so I thought it would be good to match that with 6 normal poses, to put into a spot-repeat, just the same as at the back.
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 8/15/2012
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On Monday I was in libraries again, for the Summer Reading Challenge, doing events similar to the series of summer workshops I've been doing in Sheffield, but just a bit further up the road, in Derbyshire.
It was a very good thing I wasn't far afield, as I was a complete idiot that morning: I left my folder by the front door at home, the one with all the artwork I use to talk around. Not good. I realised my mistake as I was walking into Sheffield station, but there was no time to go back - my train was due in 15 minutes.
As usual, John came to the rescue. He drove my folder all the way to Brimington Library for me and hand-delivered it. He was so quick off the mark that he beat me there - what a hero!
This is me using some of the roughs that were in the folder, to explain the process of designing the big bear in Bears on the Stairs. I also showed them a piece of big, pastel artwork from Stinky! and read them Dragon's Dinner, deconstructing my illustrations as I went. Then it was time to get stuck into some drawing.
The children first learnt how to choose faces and body language to communicate emotions...
...then we all created lots of angry, sad, frightened, shocked, sarcastic and grumpy cats, dogs, bears, owls, warthogs, monkeys, hamsters etc.
After lunch my minder and I nipped down the road to Staveley Library, where I did it all again.
Both the workshops were really well attended: we had to squeeze everyone in, so a big thank you to the guys at the library service for their help with publicity.
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 7/17/2012
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I abandoned John again last Tuesday. As we speak, I am in Santo Domingo, sketching my hand off at the Urban Sketchers symposium. In the meantime, I thought I'd leave you with this 2nd post about the changes I've been making to my roughs for SWAP?!?
You remember there were 2 major redraws needed, as a result of feedback from the publisher: Lucy and Sparky leaving ballet class, which we looked at recently, and the final spread.
At the end of the story, Sparky finds out that little girls have baths every night. At last he wants to swap back.
Originally I had Lucy enjoying the bubble bath Sparky didn't want to have, with him sitting on the loo beside her, reading 'Ballet for Dogs'. But the text has changed slightly since then. Now the same conversation flows across both pages, so it makes no sense for them to be in a different part of the house.
So in an earlier drawing, I introduced a window...
...through which Sparky could escape the bath, ending up in the back garden. I thought that would be quite funny:
I promised to show you how I used the endpapers to finish off my story's narrative with a little visual joke.
In an original draft, I had the last spread taking place in the bathroom instead of the back garden, with Lucy enjoying the bubble bath that Sparky has narrowly avoided. I was going to draw Sparky sitting beside the bath reading Ballet for Dogs: a Ruff Guide (sorry). But they don't get near the bath any more: the action all stays downstairs.
So I thought I would end with Sparky, clearly delusional, thinking he was actually good at ballet, then show him and Lucy cavorting in their ballet gear on the endpapers. I originally envisaged him being dreadful, as he was in class, but then it occurred to me that it might be funnier if he did indeed manage to get good!
John sourced me lots of photos of ballet dancing couples, using Google Images, from which I did these very quick sketches, just to capture the basic poses:
Then I drew Lucy and Sparky in the same positions. It was a bit tricky here and there, since their body-shapes were very different from your average dancer, and a couple of them didn't work as well as the others, but it came together surprisingly quickly:
5 Comments on There's a Dog Dancing across the Endpapers!, last added: 6/17/2012
Yesterday was great - I had an entire, more or less uninterrupted day of working on the new roughs! It's really helped me to get properly warmed up with the characters and things are starting to take shape.
Remember on Tuesday I was thinking about what Sparky might get up to in his lessons? Well, that afternoon I had a go at drawing the 'Quiet Reading' class above and I'm really pleased with how it's looking. I drew the Music lesson properly too:
I originally sketched him with his head in a trumpet, but when I looked up the picture reference, the trumpet end wasn't really big enough, so I've gone for a French Horn instead, which is somehow funnier anyway.
Yesterday I mostly worked on re-drawing the lunchtime scene (which will sit on the opposite page to the two illustrations above), working up proper characters from my original sketch and making the ideas from that first visualisation fit the shape of the space.
<
This week I've started to look at the new book roughs. I'm still doing fairly rough sketches so far, trying to get a feel for how images might work in their allotted spaces. It takes a while to get your brain (and your drawing hand) back into gear, but by the end of the week I should be really up to speed.
My story is about a little girl, Lucy, and her dog, Sparky. When her alarm goes off, Lucy thinks it's not fair that she has to get up and go to school, while Sparky stays home. Sparky would much rather go to school, as he thinks staying in is boring, so they take the only reasonable course of action...
...they swap places for the day! Sparky (who I decided should be a slightly fat, mongrel with an over-eager attitude to life), squeezes into Lucy's uniform, while she makes herself a doggy disguise. I had so much fun illustrating Sparky in Lucy's uniform.
2 Comments on 'Dogswap': Starting on the Roughs, last added: 5/4/2012
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 12/13/2011
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Last week, it made a nice change to work for 2 days in a secondary school. They are so BIG compared to primary schools!
I visited Becket School this time last year, but it took some doing: thick snow stopped all trains for a while. They invited me back this year and it did start to snow again, but fortunately we got away with it.
I was working the whole 2 days with Y7 students (1st years). We started with a lecture to them all - around 170. Above I am talking about characterisation: how you can use pointy or round shapes to suggest evil or vulnerable creatures, and how carefully chosen clothing can give hints to a character's personality.
5 Comments on Becket School: Workshops with Older Kids, last added: 12/14/2011
Remember the children's illustrations that were created as a response to my exhibition? Children were asked to create there own picture book character, inspired by the show.
Well, after much deliberation, I am finally ready to announce the winners (drum roll.....)
First Prize goes to Eloise (who is just 4 years old!) for Rose the Monster Princess:
I really like all the details, especially the pink hairspray and the green, slimy hand-prints on her pink dress from her green slimy hands. I think a monster princess is a fabulous idea and a great character for a story.
Second prize goes to Emmy for the Purple-Lipped Snapper Firetail:
What a great character and so unusual. I like the colours: the blending to create the fire
1 Comments on Children's Illustration Competition: Winners..., last added: 11/28/2011
Sarah, my designer at Egmont, has finished the cover design for my new book. The stripy text I prepared and scanned is all done and in place, the baby croc has his pants on (!) the new strap-line is in place (although that still might change: we're not sure if it's too educational sounding) and the colour is...
...yep: yellow.
This is quite funny. Though I was the one who stuck out for yellow originally, when the guys at Egmont wanted lilac (because I thought it would work better with the green croc), I changed my mind when I saw the lilac mocked up. Typical then, that the consensus at Egmont should now change to liking the yellow. It's especially ironic, given that I had to change the cover of Baby Goes Baaaaa!, which I conceived as yellow from the start, to a duck-egg blue. Hey ho.
If you want to read about how the cover was designed from my scratch, take a look at my initial sketches.
By:
Lynne Chapman,
on 11/13/2011
Blog:
An Illustrator's Life For Me!
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Remember our ill-fated trip to North Wales? Well, one thing that helped take our minds off our problems was the pleasure of spending time with Shoo Rayner, who was doing the same festival as me, and so staying at the same hotel as us for the 3 nights.
It was lovely to have breakfast and dinner together every day and chew the fat (though not literally I hasten to add - the food at the manorhaus is gorgeous). It's so rare to get real time with fellow authors and illustrators, we always have fun comparing notes (comparing 'horror stories' from dodgy school visits is also a fave!).
Shoo is very into creating exciting ideas for the web at the moment, and has for some time been making little films about how he draws. His latest project though is to create filmed interviews with other illustrators and authors he meets on the road. So, while we were together in Ruthin, he asked me if I would mind doing an interview. What fun!
The hotel let us use their restaurant one afternoon after our library events were over. Shoo set up a tripod and I collected all the bits and bobs I had with me for my talks with the children. Then we just chatted about them. All very relaxed. I drew
3 Comments on I'm on YouTube!, last added: 11/14/2011
On Friday, I finally got the go-ahead for the cover for Baby Can Bounce.
When I was deciding on the title, I could have chosen any of the featured actions, but I wanted to keep the alliteration that I established with Baby Goes Baaaaa!, which narrowed it down. Ultimately, Baby Can Bounce! is catchy, plus it's a fun, slightly silly action for a cover.Inside the actual book, the 'Baby can bounce' page features the slug and snake:Though the idea of a slug on a cover makes me laugh, slug and snake are not desperately cute and might put some people off (especially those with slug or snake phobias!), but one of my fave characters is the baby croc from Baby can dig: What seems like months ago, Sarah, my designer at Egmont, sent me a basic cover layout, just to get the ball rolling and give me something to design around. That's really handy, as it gives me some idea how much space the title etc is going to need:
When last I showed you my artwork on the book, I was about to start the hedgehogs. I got on with them early last week:
There's so much other stuff tacked on the desk above, as I am using the artwork from Baby Goes Baaaaa! as colour reference for the characters etc.
The hedgehogs are all done now:
They are illustrating the page: 'Baby can dance' of course. I thought it would be more fun if they were dressed up. As you can see from this earlier rough, they were originally going to be trying on Mum and Dad's clothes, like children do...
...but Egmont felt that made things look too old and not babyish enough, so I went for more random dress-ups instead.
I finished the week by working on the polar bear and the anteater. Polar bear is about done (Baby can hide) so today it's anteater (Baby can shake) I'm going to get stuck into.
I've been rather distracted today. Not sure why. Every time I got interrupted for the loo, or the phone, or anything else, I found I simply had to check my email, just in case. And then, as if by magic, I would lose 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or worse to the dreaded computer. Facebook, you are a fiend! I really should turn it off. But then I might miss something genuinely important...
Anyway, I did manage to get a reasonable amount done today and yesterday, despite myself. I finished off my monkeys and bunny and made a start on the octopus above yesterday. This morning I finished him off:
Confession time: I nicked the cute star-sunglasses idea from this detail in a lovely book George and Ghost, by my good friend Cassia Thomas (hope you don't mind Cass x):
This afternoon, made a start on the tiger ('Baby can colour'), who is crayoning a portrait of his little spider friend. Ahhhhh....
I should have got much further on with him really, but it was then that the worst of my fidgitiness k
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5 Comments on Crocodile on a Trampoline!, last added: 9/28/2011
Oooh! A big project. Good luck with it!
This is a very interesting and exciting project that I look forward to seeing progress. I am really hooked on children's art and this will be fantastic. How proud all those little ones will be to see the finished wall. Good luck and I hope you don't have too many problems as you go along.
Love Mum
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Such projects are often more challenging than first expected. A local artist in my world did a mural on a school wall using drawings that kids did of the BC Winter Olympics in 2010. Here is my post about it with a link to her site, if you are interested.
this sounds like a massive amount of work- but fun!!!
I have to say that gorilla is my favorite!!!
can't wait to see more!
Thanks all :-)
I am a bit daunted by the size and how on earth I am going to produce it on my poor computer, but it should look amazing when it's done, so I am rather excited.
I like the gorilla too Mai - the child has based it on my Big Gorilla from An Itch to Scratch but added something wonderfully manic to him!