A Little Bit Stuck

These past two weeks, I have gotten a little sidetracked. I watched some lessons on how to make/illustrate children's books, started on a few other artistic endeavors and worked on other non-art related tasks. 

When I finally sat down to work on another page illustration for The Little Tiger From India, I realized I had been avoiding it. There are lots of decisions to be made at this point. 

An Unfinished sketch of "The Stranger"

Do I do all the illustrations before putting on the text?

What size do I make the text?

Should I print out the text and glue it in place so I know where it will go?

Where should the text go?

What margins should I have?

How do you do those little text boxes when the text doesn't go straight across the page?

Should I really being doing all this in some computer program so I can mess around with the format and not have to re-draw everything when I need move something over half a centimetre?

(The English Writer part of my brain is screaming at me for having so many questions in a row, yet they serve to convey the reason I've been a little bit stuck.)

Time to remind myself that I need not do it "the best" nor even "the right" way. I just need to make some decisions and get on with it. 

I do believe printing out the text and pasting it into the approximate location will be helpful. I'm considering making a document with the same dimensions at my book to experiment with different shapes of the text on the page. Also, as much as I hate too, I believe I may need to draw some margin lines onto my rough to keep everything in place. 

These, I believe, are sufficient goals for this next week. Certainly not as entertaining as pictures, yet necessary to the overall quality of the piece. 

Of Gray-scale and Color and Overcoming Fears

This one is my sisters. I had a much smaller one.

This rickety tin paint set is probably older than I am. I owned a very similar, but smaller one when I was little. I remember prying it open open with chubby fingers, and using one of those cheap red paint brushes with the plasticy bristles to mix up the colors in muddying pools. I have no idea what grade this paint would receive for quality, but I'm sure it wouldn't be high, and yet this is the paint that is helping me overcome my fear of color. 

Ever since I've attempted to create good art (from my early teens on), I have been afraid of color. I never understood it. I don't have a natural eye for it, and there seemed to be too much information about it out there for me to learn. 

My first introduction to color wheels and color theory was in Barry Stebbing's book, Lambs Book of Art. However, with the freedom of an energetic, home-schooled child, I skipped over most of the exercises and lessons on color because I wanted to get on with the "real art" projects. Grass is green. Sky is blue. And people are pink. That's all I thought I needed to know when I was eleven. I'd rather spend my time drawing clothes on that funny cartoon and turning him into a construction worker. 

Only one page in this book had a date on it, so I'm left to assume I was 12 when I did this.
I was hoping I was much younger...

My second introduction to color was in a home school co-op when I was 12. I had an art lesson each Friday, and we tried out different mediums. For some reason, in my head this did not count as a "real" art class--I think mainly because the art teacher did not have a degree in art. Looking back, I could totally be wrong about that and perhaps she did know more about art than I gave her credit for--not that I myself knew anything about the academics or history of art. 

How I treated pointillism because I hated how time consuming it was.
I can't imagine I got a good grade and this piece...

A lovely depiction of a hawk killing one of our chickens. Age 12

I enjoyed art. I did it for fun, and if it wasn't fun, I didn't see the point in doing it. I never intended to do anything academic or professional with it. 

A painting from that art class I actually took some time on. I don't cringe so hard at this one.

When I was 13 or 14, I discovered two books on drawing realistic portraits. Secrets to Drawing Realistic Portraits by Carrie Stuart Parks) and Draw Real People by Lee Hammond. Instantly, I was hooked. I watched some YouTube videos, made grids, turned photos into gray-scale, and drew until I became proficient with graphite and charcoal. I entered some portraits in the Fulton County Fair, won some ribbons, and gave some portraits away to family and friends. 

Age 14, after reading the books. This was drawn
from a live model and the first portrait I was really proud of

Age 12? Before reading the books

I became comfortable with black and white. If I turned a photo to gray-scale, I could draw it because all I had to do was match the different values and shades. I even wished I had a filter I could slide over my eyes, or a switch to flip, so I could see everything in black and white, like an old television set. 

One of my more artistic ones which won a blue ribbon at the fair. Age 16 or 17. 

Actually drew this one from my imagination instead of a photograph which makes
it more special to me although it didn't not place at the fair. Age 16

And that is when color really began to scare me. When working with color, I could not simply draw the shapes and fill them in dark or light. I knew there was more to red than just red, but I didn't know how to see the different shades and tints, let alone reproduce them with pencils or paint. 

Notice the halfhearted shading, though I'm actually surprised I made this a whole scene
I was probably 16/17. I was terrible at putting dates on my drawings

There were two main deterrents to color. One, the sheer number of options available: watercolor, oil, acrylic, pastels, colored pencil, markers, etc. (Not to mention that each of these had countless brands, and countless different types of tools to work with.)
Two, it could be expensive to invest in paints and all the tools needed. It was much simpler, and cheaper, to stick to pencils. 

Charcoal drawing from my college art class. Age 22

But here I am ten years later and wanting to illustrate some children's books I have written. I could do charcoal drawings, but I love the look of watercolors. I already own some watercolors and  watercolor paper, gifts I'd collected over the years and was too scared to use because I might ruin them. 

Perhaps it was boredom, or the sudden lack of obligations, but when I returned from summer camp last year, I began experimenting with art. I did some drawings in marker, a few charcoal portraits, watercolor, painted on some newspaper, and began sharing my art on Instagram. 

A few watercolors with a friend

 During this time, I learned a few things. When I create art for someone else, in order to share it and give it away as a present, I find it much more enjoyable to create. 

Hedghog Boi. Acrylic on newspaper

When I realized that I could make art that other people enjoyed with materials I have lying around the house, it freed me from the fear of needing to have the right tools, the best paints, the expensive papers --all these things that I knew nothing about, that held me back from creating because I didn't know the "right" way to do it. 

It took starting with the materials I have on hand to get me interested in color theory and how light works, paper texture and how to set up a pallet. 

The rules and theory are building blocks, important tools to know how to use and when to disregard. Just like with English grammar, the better you know the rules, the more successful you'll be in breaking them. 

Remember that old paint pallet from the beginning of this post?

Did this yesterday  for another story I wrote. First time doing a full-color scene with so much detail.
Doing this illustration took away some of my anxiety about painting the illustrations for this book. 

Once I started using it, it gave me a jumping off point. I am willing to invest more in some of the "right tools" as I find limitations to the ones I am using. I'm excited to learn more about color and materials because I know it will help me grow as an artist. I have a project that I'm passionate about, and I get to share with others. Now I'm excited to learn, but know I don't have to wait until I know it all before I start creating. 

Book Rough

Happy Easter, Everyone!

Have you ever had a specific thing in your head that you want to find a picture of or read about, but you don't remember what it is called? So you keep googling random things hoping somehow it will show up, or at least you'll find a clue as to what it is called?

That was me last week. 

I wanted to find examples of children's book illustrations that were still kinda sketchy and had the words put in the picture with them. For some reason, I had in my head that this was called a "children's book mock-up", however, when I googled that, all I got was some company who sold like cardboard books that you could put your own cover on the front? I didn't really look into it because that wasn't at all what I was looking for. 

Frustrated with myself, I stumbled around the internet, searching random children's book related things until I found the word I was looking for: roughs. 

Paper cut out to make my rough. (8x16) I just used a large Strathmore pad of drawing paper

Basically (to my understanding) what a rough i, is a to-scale draft of the whole book, illustrations and words included. The illustrations are usually done in pencil, and are still sketchy, and the words might be printed off and pasted in (depending on whether or not they are making it on a computer program or a hard copy). This helps to finalize illustrations, text layout, etc.

I spent part of last week putting together a rough of my book.

Papers folded and ready for an extra trim.
I cut them out with scissors the first time because the paper was too big to fit in the paper cutter. 

All the trims. And now the paper is ready to be made into folios and sewn together. 

I have only gotten one and a half illustration done for it so far. 

I've never really draw the same illustration several times before. I don't enjoy reproducing the same art, even though it is meant to improve it. Once I draw something, I don't want to draw it again. This could be a bit of a problem with illustrating. 

My first illustration in my rough. Notice how many reference photos I was working off of.
Honestly, all the papers scattered around made me feel like a professional. :)

I realize now that I did not take any pictures of the sewing process, and that may be of some interest to some of my readers. I will either do a post about how to sew together a book when I sew my final one, or perhaps I'll do an extra post during the week sometime on it. Let me know if you'd be interested it that. 

Time for a confession: I had two sew this book together twice. The first time I forgot exactly what I was doing (it's been awhile since the last time I sewed a book) but it was easy to tell I did it wrong, and did not take long to correct it. 

This week I hope to do several more illustrations and figure out what do I do with the backgrounds??

More Research, More Pages

This past week, I have spent more time researching how to illustrate children's books, develop characters, how big to draw your final illustrations, etc. I have found some interesting articles at this website: https://www.wordsandpics.org/ 

Following some advice I read from somewhere, I chose a page from near the middle of the book and started drawing to scale. This is how it turned out:

Drawing with some notes at the sides

I re-drew the facial expressions so many times. I was attempting to capture a fake-mad expression, but so far can only get it to look genuinely angry or creepy. If I pair the angled eyebrows with a smiling growl, it looks creepy. However, if I omit the angry eyebrows, it doesn't appear to be growling. Angry mouth with open eyebrows just doesn't fit well. So, for now, I am stuck with her looking angry. 

Added teeth and shading in the mouth, also tiger stripes for the background

First try, but the top words felt static/boring

I have several pages in the book where there are only one or a small handful of words on them. I have been debating whether I should just enlarge the font, or I draw the words. After experimenting with this page, I have decided I want to illustrate them.

And how cute is that Tiger?

Second try, with more lively/dramatic lettering

It also helped me to decide that I want to add some "real" tigers in the illustrations. I thought about putting a Tiger or Tiger element on every page/spread of pages. I've always enjoyed books that have a little lizard or mouse or such hidden on every page, but I'm not sure if I could seamlessly incorporate that in this story without it taking away from it. 


My next step, I think, will be to put together a to-scale rough of the whole book. I think I will cut the pages and illustrate them, then bind them together somehow and paste in the text where I think it might go. 

This will force me to make concrete the fuzzy details of the pages that I keep dismissing. Part of the reason I keep dismissing them is because I get overwhelmed with the infinite possible number of ways to draw it. 

As I've said before, I don't quite trust my ability to make stuff up, as I do to recreate things. This makes drawing the people and the scenes in the house easier than doing the lettering and vignettes. 

I am nervous for when it comes to putting the final illustrations with the final text into the final book. I don't think that I can get around using some sort of computer program to put them together nicely. Annnnd that is the area where I really have no idea what I am doing. I've never liked to do digital art, and it is expensive to get the programs I'll need to make it look professional. 

We'll see in the coming weeks whether or not I break down and buy something, or if I try to do it all with things I can find for free. For now, however, I'll stick with pencil and paper. And lets be real, that step may take me several weeks to complete anyway. 

New Designs

As promised, here is a photo of my first storyboard:

As you can see it is very sloppy and has some notes in the corner about page numbers.

Friday, I made a bigger, more detailed version. On this one I have all the words to the story written out in approximately all the right places. While drawing it, I noticed a few places I could cut down on pages, but still not enough to make it 32 pages, so I've decided to leave it. I did change a few of the layouts, however. There are still pages that I'm not 100% sure how I want them to look, but that's ok for now. 

I decided to make The Little Tiger of India an 8"x 8" book, for no better reason than I thought a square book would be cool. For the storyboard I did 2" x 2" squares. 

On Saturday, I cut out a few 8" x 8" squares of drawing paper as well as a 8" x 16" two-page spread. My intention was to draw several pages of my book in the actual book size, however, when I attempted to draw one of the poses, I just was not liking the illustration style I had chosen. It was very two-dimensional, and I was having a hard time figuring out how to position the head at different angles and still have it look the same. I also could not figure out how to make the Little Tiger crawl with such a big head. Because of these dilemmas, I decided to once more change the style. 

The new style

The the heads in the middle are the first ones I drew, trying mostly to stick to my original style. When that wasn't working, I tried something else and came up with the little guy on the bottom left. I tried him out in different poses, using photos as reference. I found he's actually tricky to draw from the front, but I think I figured it out. I was surprised at how easy it was to keep him looking like the same character. 

Next step was to see if I could draw other characters in the same style. I did me next. Most of my reference photos from India were of me in a hat, and as I love wearing hats, I decided it should be part of the book too. I think it will add interest and set the Stranger apart from the Little Tiger more as well. 

Me with my hair looking much nice here than it normally does. 

I'm super happy with how the sketch of me crawling looks! I have rarely drawn characters in different poses. I've stuck with portraits, and most of those smiling looking straight at the camera. I was always striving for something nice, professional looking. If I was going to spend so much time on a drawing, why would I do someone making a weird face? Or worse yet, one where you couldn't even see their face? That seems very silly to me now, but that's how I used to think. I could probably count on one hand the number of people I've drawn in action poses or even facing away from the paper. 

One other factor that went into me not drawing full persons, especially doing something other than standing still, is that I never wanted to memorize body proportions. I drew for fun, and that never seemed fun for me, so I never bothered with it. 

I'm thinking I maaaay need to look into it now. 

And a bonus picture for comparison:

Old style, I'll need to put the bow-tie on the new one

New style, but definitely not a final product

I'd ask you to vote on which one was your favorite, buuut I've already decided to do this new style. I would still be interested in your input though, what you like/don't like about this or that, and who knows? I may incorporate some of your ideas. 

I still need to work on my color scheme and painting skills, but I'm happy with the direction this project is headed. 

The Page is the Limit

In my researching, I found the standard length of a children's book is 32 pages. I looked through several children's books that we own and counted pages and found this roughly to be true. A good number had the standard 32 pages, but some did not. There were some books that went well over, into the 50s or 60s even, which made me wonder. 

Sunset in India

Is there a category of book between children's book and a Young Adult novel? I always classified the early "I can read" type books as children's books because my parents would read them to use when we were little, and they were some of my favorites. (Think Sam and the Firefly, Fish Out of Water, Billy and Blaze) Now I am curious if those would be classified under a different category. I have not tried googling it yet though. 

This brings me to another dilemma. For every book you write, you are supposed to have an intended audience in mind, and write toward that age group. The age of your main character is supposed to be the same (or roughly the same) as your intended audience. 

Now my main character is about 3-4yrs old, and my intended audience is roughly the same 3-7 or so. (Of course I hope it to appeal to adults and older children as well.) However, I think that I may have a few over the recommended word count. One article I read said no more than 50 on a page, and I am well under that. 

Well, I decided I'd better just look this up. This article has a nice concise list of both book categories and recommended number of words per category:   https://www.writing.ie/guest-blogs/childrens-books-age-categories-and-word-counts/

My word count currently stands at 261, so I think I'm in a pretty good spot in regards to this standard for children's books. 

With the page count, however, I am struggling. My original rough draft was 50 pages long. That is 18 more that the standard count, and also not in the normal multiple of 8 pages. In my second rough draft storyboard, I cut some words and some full page illustrations, and combined some pages.  (As of right now, I do not have a way to add photos of them, so I apologize.) This got me down to 40 pages.

I don't think that I can cut/combine anymore without losing some of the fun and impact of the story. 

This is a really great video that explains the layout of a children's book and how the pages are set up. It is well laid out and was very helpful when I put together my second rough draft: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6w0ZhMiXj8

Hopefully by next Sunday I will be able to upload some photos again and show you what my storyboard/rough draft looks like. 

The Characters

I do not know what the recommended number of characters is for a children's book; however, mine has five: two main ones, a minor one and two that appear once in pictures only. I had a friend who I went to India with that I would have loved to include in the story, but for simplicity's sake, I had to leave her out. This still makes me a little sad. 

As promised, I shall introduce them all to you as they currently appear. You have already met the star of our story, the Little Tiger, so I shall introduce you next to "the Stranger."

As you may have guessed, the stranger is me. Skinny, slouchy, pony-tailed, and pale, I showed up at the Little Tiger's house, and he wasn't sure what to make of me. 

With my character, I want to convey someone a little different from who the Little Tiger is used to seeing. For this purpose, I might mess with the coloring of the original painting, for instance, making my hair lighter and eyes blue. I want there to be enough contrast that it makes the friendship that forms that much more sweet. 

The Little Tiger From India is a story playing off of differences and similarities that I hope readers will pick up more subconsciously than what I will be laying out for you in these blog posts. 

Next, I have an aunt, who is in just one or two of the illustrations, and "the Mother" who comes in at the end of the story. (I apologize for the difficulty  of seeing such light pencil drawings.) 

An Aunt on the left, the Mother, on the right, and the Little Tiger at bottom left. 

A few things I want to convey with the Mother are a peaceful countenance, traditional Indian attire, and an atmosphere of safety. I remember the hospitality and love shown me by so many of the women who I met in India, and I hope to be able to capture some of that in this one character in this story. And maybe some children will read my story and see someone who is dressed a little differently from them and yet experience the same care and love they would from their own mother. 

And last, but not least, three progressions of another aunt who will be featured in the story, plus a little explanation of the thought process behind creating them. 

The paintings are listed in order of how I painted them, but honestly I like parts of each. Each time you may notice the clothing gets more detailed, and I hope to replicate the last one in my final project. At the outset, I was liking the flowing hair in the last illustration; however, I think the more tame, proper hairstyle conveys the personality of the person I'm drawing a little better. I like the highlights that I left in the last one, however. In the end, I will probably do a combination of the last two paintings.

I'm realizing a difficulty with drawing people I know and talking about the process is to word things carefully. Obviously I am going to be using creative liberty with dress, hairstyles, personality, etc., but I don't want to inadvertently cause offense by careless wording or presentation. I have only received positive feedback from everyone, and I really appreciate the support. 

In the up-coming weeks, be on the look out for story-boarding,  lists of things I hope to accomplish, and whether or not I can fit my story in the recommended 32 page limit.