The wall o’ final roughs so far. There are still a couple of empty spaces.

Firebird/the sun + reference.

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But here are a few photos of the last spread I was working on over the last week or so. I’ll do a much longer post when the final illustration is done because this particular illustration underwent quite a change when I realised it didn’t quite jive with the concept of the other pages, and it’s a good example of the evolution some of my illustrations go through from first impression to final composition.

This is the first pass at the rough – my very first draft of the book, the one that went to the publisher:

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I thought about this particular spread for a very long time, while I was working on the others. This is a thumbnail I jotted down when I suddenly realised what I needed to do. The weird scribble in the lower right hand corner of the page is a reindeer-drawn sleigh.

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This is an early colour mockup of the lower right corner of the spread. This has also undergone some changes since this initial rough, and I’ll show that later on, when the illustration is complete.

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Aa detail of the final tight rough:

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And this is the result of the other stuff I’ve been working on over the summer:

Bear spirits (or Ursa Major and Ursa Minor)

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White beaked dolphin

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Ivan

Bears!

I’ve finished the India roughs and have moved on to the Russia pages.

This isn’t meant to be a how-to; every illustrator has their own way of working and their own process. Mine tends to involve a lot of redrawing and gradual tightening of the illustration. Perhaps not the most efficient way of producing a book and certainly not the quickest, but it’s what makes sense to me and is what I’m comfortable with. I like to have the drawings as right as I can get them within reason, before going to colour. Truthfully, I could redraw something forever and never be completely happy with it, but at some point it has to get ‘finished’.

The steps below are repeated for all the spreads –this particular book has 17 spreads + a title page and cover. And maybe endpapers.

loose rough + mockup

The above is what I send to the publisher to get sign off. It’s really rough and not well drawn but expresses the major elements + characters in the composition and roughly where they, and the text, will be. These are small roughs done on printer paper. The smaller size is easier to handle (scan etc) and quicker to draw.

What follows is a series of redraws until I’m happy (enough) with composition and elements. These are done at a larger size than the final print size because I’m more comfortable working in the details a little larger. When the pages are drawn at a size up from the earlier roughs, the compositions often fall apart, so sometimes things need to be shifted around a bit.

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rough

When the drawings are tight enough (above), they are scanned, sized up, text + crops & gutter are dropped in for reference, and then printed. This ends up as the base for the next stage of drawings.

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tight rough on parchment

There are often a lot of sketches and studies in between the previous stage and (above). Some pages offer more challenges than others and require more figuring to get compositions or elements right. These last rough stages are all on tracing paper.

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final trace-ready rough on parchment paper

next steps: final drawing + colour. But first, I need to finish the rest of the 17 spreads + cover & title page.

I’ve finished China and have moved on to the India section of the book. (and, wow! is that thumb ever wrong!). One more country to go after this and then onward to pages set in nebulous locations.

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detail: