From Imagination to Images

Currently, I am beginning to illustrate a new book that I have written. With Family Flower, the illustrations were floating around in my head first and I had to piece together the story. However, with this next book the tables have turned. I wrote the story first and now I have to enhance it with visuals.

Before I get down to business, I like to just roughly sketch out each page in order to get a vision of what the whole book will look like. I use a large spiral drawing pad and I divide it into fourths with my pencil. With this method, I can easily see the succession of my work and make sure it flows together. If I am having trouble conveying with my hand what I see in my head, I will sketch two pictures or skip the page altogether and come back to it later. It's amazing how much breaks can give fresh perspective.
The next steps will be experimenting with mediums to see which one works best for this story and then taking each picture and recreating it with a lot more detail. Some stages of this process can be slower than others. I may even work on some other books I have up my sleeve and just skip back and forth. That's the joy of being the author and the illustrator I suppose.