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??