I’m about halfway through the first pass at my roughs (8 spreads sketched and 8 to go). I work them out on one sheet of paper so I can keep track of the over-all flow. Sometimes I come up with a couple of variations of one illustration. I’ll drawn the alternates out on separate pieces of paper and tape them down over the master page.
boat (and nautilus) studies.
Thumbnail planning sketches
One of the locations in the book is a village where cormorants are still used as a method of fishing. They wear a collar around their necks that prevent them from swallowing their catch which they bring back to the boat. While it’s not mentioned in the text, it’s such a cool detail and the cormorants are so interesting looking that I’d love to include it in one of the illustrations. I just need to figure out how and if it’ll work or not. If not, they might make an appearance in the endpapers instead.
Kirsti Anne Wakelin | picture book illustration 