I met Ethan Long, accomplished children’s book writer and illustrator, yesterday and he graciously accepted to look at a few of my previous dummy books. It was a hard and honest critique, of which I was extremely grateful. Good critique from seasoned industry professionals are very hard to come by. He said he liked my sketch work but my paintings seemed to lose some of the activeness. The books he reviewed were early works so perhaps my new work has evolved to a point that my new paintings are where they need to be. I’m sort of regretting not having brought in some of my new paintings. It did make me a little nervous, wondering if I am on the right track with this book. It is quite an undertaking. I’d hate to think that 8 months of work are moving in the wrong direction. Still, I have committed to it and I hate to have an unfinished project so I will press on.
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Illustration of Ruby june imprisoned
Here is the illustrated page 13, a cleaned up version of the thumbnail that I will re-work in charcoal on the canvas. This is the last painting for my show. From here out I am thinking I will work on all the pieces at the same time. I will do all the cleaned up illustrations, then all the charcoal too the canvas then all the painting. If it weren’t for the art show and wanting to get some pieces out there in front of people, this is how I would have worked from the start.
Page 15 painted
I finally finished the page 15 painting, or at least got it where I want it for the time being (are these things ever really done?) It took me a little while with many comparisons to the cover illustration to get the color where I wanted it. I’m almost hoping I don’t sell these at the September show so I have something to compare the later ones to.
Page 15 charcoals done
I finished the charcoals of my page 15 last night, the scene where Ruby June finds the Voice of the Sea. Or at least I think I finished them. I kept stepping back and wondering if it was where I wanted it. At the time it was but I find it always better to sleep on it and come back with fresh eyes before committing to spray fixing. It was close enough that I could scan it and start work on digital color studies.
starting page 15
I’m starting work on page 15. I felt pretty confident in that composition and thought it would make another good stand-alone piece for the September gallery show I’m doing at the City Arts Factory in downtown Orlando. It was a choice between this one and page 13 (I just liked the look of those deep ones.) In the end, this one one out for the next piece. Here is the gridded off refined thumbnail… which is more of an illustration at this point. Later today I’ll start work on the charcoals.
Tweaked Thumbnails
I finally got around to fixing the few thumbnails that were bothering me and I managed to lose 1 and keep the story pretty cohesive in the stand-alone visual read. I wish I could lose more visual pages as the fewer pages the more cost effective the book will be… not that I want to skimp on the visuals. If I thought people would shell out for it, I’d make the book HUGE! Anyway, here are the revised thumbs… not too different. I think I can move forward now and be happy.
Thumbnails are finally done
It took a while but I finally knocked out a set of thumbnails I’m happy with. The only problem now is figuring out which are absolutely necessary and how to divide up the accompanying text. I’d like to bring the page count down to 12 spreads but I know that isn’t going to work for me so I’ll content myself with as close to 12 as I can get and still live with myself. Here is the thumbnail sheet of all the spreads I have to choose from.
Still pushing hard to get thumbnails done
I’ve been swamped with work but every chance I get I’m composing thumbnails. At this point I’m about half way done but I’d prefer to post all 24 pages together. I’m beginning to wonder if I need to change the book to be 12 pages since the “pages” span back to front over the seam. Otherwise it will be 48 single pages and that might push the eventual price of the book too high for my liking. While the art of the book is still the thing to me, I would like to eventually make it possible for everyone to enjoy it… not just the super rich.
First pass of the written work complete
Okay, so maybe I lied a little. Just can’t stay away from the book regardless of how much work wants to monopolize my time. Guess I’ll have to stop sleeping. In any case, my wife and I went on a little weekend excursion for our anniversary. In the car, on the way to the beach, I was hammering furiously away on the keyboard of my laptop computer in an effort to make some progress on the book. My muse was with me apparently as the written element of the book came together without too much fuss. Now, that being said, there will be rewrites, as there always are. I’m sure things will need to be tweaked and tightened up, but I believe I’m in a good place to start the dummy book.
A dummy book, for those of you who might not be up on the verbiage, is a book of rough illustration and thumbnails based on the text. Its purpose is to see how all the elements work together before finished illustrations begin. Maybe, work permitting, I’ll be able to get some of this done in the next week or two.
Here is a sample from the book…
Charter Jack then said that the green men were after a special map he had hidden in a hollow oar, safe from prying eyes. It showed the location of a treasure called the Voice of the Sea. He told Ruby June that if the Deep Ones ever got their hands on the Voice of the Sea, that would mean “a heap o’ trouble” for everyone up on dry land.
“We need to make sure the treasure is safe, then!” said Ruby June.
Charter Jack agreed. The two of them, along with Charter Jack’s pet gar, Lumpy, packed some dive equipment and set sail for the treasure.
Over the sea sailed Ruby June and Charter Jack. It wasn’t long before they found Eye Socket Island and sailed into the lagoon shown in the map.
Forced hiatus
My teaching job has ramped up and I’m going to have to be revising my course content for the next few weeks. Direction has been passed down that the revisions must be done in two months (which is not a lot of time for this type of operation.) It promises to be fun work but, unfortunately, is going to inadvertently steal time away from the book. I promise to work on it every spare moment and post as I am able, but it may be a little less frequently at this point.
I have already written the first half of the story, working from a detailed outline of the whole book, and hope to finish that soon. I’m not sure if I’ll post the whole thing or maybe just some exerpts. The real fun should come when I start thumbnailing the pages and setting up the dummy book. It is a process whereby rough compositions are arranged with the text to make sure everything is going to work as a whole before doing a bunch of finished pieces.