The Snailephant

My daughter's teacher wanted me to read my lunch note story (well, part anyway – it's pretty long) for her class, and talk about what it's like working as an illustrator. That gave me an excuse to do a finished drawing of the characters, as well as the snailephant in all its glory (or repugnance, depending on your opinion of snails and/or elephants). The story arc for this part starts here.

It went over well in the class. The kids asked a lot of questions about drawing and writing, which is what the teacher was hoping for. Also, I made print-outs of this for the class to hand out, but the kids got so excited about it that the teacher asked if she could pass them out at the end of the day instead.

That's the kind of feedback illustrators love – my art will cause chaos! Totally made my day.

The Lunch Note Project

Here's the beginning of something I've been writing for my daughter. She asked me if I would put notes in her lunch, so I tried to oblige. Now, I'm not the best letter writer, but I do like to tell stories, so the notes ended up as a daily installment.

Instead of putting them here all the time (since they occur daily), I made a separate blog for them called The Lunch Note Project. If anyone's interested in seeing where this goes, that's where they'll all be.

The Startling Conclusion!

Startling to the greedy woodcutter, that is. Just about everyone else saw this coming.

My next big question – do I give the kids this book now, or hold off on it for a Christmas book? If I give it to them now, it might be a tad more age appropriate. But if I hold off until Christmas, I've got it all finished in September – WooHOO!

I get the feeling I'm going to break down and just give it to them. I've got some months before December, so I've got plenty of time to put something else together.

The Return of the Mermaid

Happiness for Some, Greed for Others

Back to the woodcutter story. Nearing the end!

Meanwhile, Back at the Other Lake...

The one without swans (you'll be seeing more of the swans later, though, the closer I get to finishing it). Still making my way through this – I'd like to finish it soon, so I can move on to an animal story for the kids' annual Christmas book.

The Story Continues

Oh, those sneaky mermaids. Good thing our hero is so honest.

Complaint is Voiced and a Test Devised

Wherein Woe is Expressed and a Mermaid Enters

Back to the pages. This one is different than The Frog Prince for me. For some reason, it was easy to come up with Moy Moy's expressions on computer. But for Gavin, I need to sketch it out first, scan it in, and trace it on screen. Every page I do this, while for The Frog Prince I think I drew 2 rough sketches for the whole book. I'm not sure why; maybe without a floor-length dress, the main character shows more body language, which I can render best in pencil first.

Below is an example from an upcoming page:

I like the looseness of pencil. But the bright colors and shapes are better for a toddler book, when it comes down to a finish.

Out of the woods and back to the woodcutter

A couple more pages, with art advice by Serena again. Thanks to her pointing it out, I saw that I got a bit off style with the original pages 2 and 3. So not only are those are gone, but changing it made the story move along a lot quicker as well. So another round of thanks are due to my lovely wife.

Someday, as my delusions of grandeur assure me, when my fairy tale books are studied by doctoral students, I'll release the first drafts so people can see my working process. But here in reality, I'll just post these.

The Woodcutter and the Mermaid – It Begins!

With the Woodcutter, of course. This is actually my second attempt at this first page. In the first one, I was trying to draw a caricature of my son Gavin, while keeping it in the same style. I made sure I worked it over and over, to get it as carefully crafted as I could.

Then, when I showed it to my wife, she said it had no life to it.

Now, this might sound like she's being critical, but as soon as she said it, I knew she was completely right. So I went back to the drawing board, thought happy instead of clever, and ended up with this sprightly fellow.

To sum up: these things are a lot more fun, thanks to Serena. But then again, everything is a lot more fun for the same reason, so no surprise there.