new book beginnings ~ db

2013/04/022014/11/08 | kirsti

We Got A Star!

This was a pleasant surprise; Dan and I got a really nice (starred) review for Dream Boats in the April 2013 edition of Quill and Quire.

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This post is part of a series documenting my process of illustrating the picture book Dream Boats (author Dan Bar-el, pub. Simply Read Books). The entire series of posts is archived here.

View a gallery of all the work-in-progress images including first sketches, reference material, mistakes, redraws, and tests, to final art at a much larger size, here.

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new book beginnings ~ db

2013/03/302014/11/08 | kirsti

Some excitement!

My publisher delivered this to my door.

This is not quite the final, done book, but it’s pretty close. It’s a bound digital proof, so things like the cover varnish, and the endpapers aren’t quite as they’d be in their finished form, but it’s given me a really good idea of what the book will look like in the end.

I’m really happy with the colour, and the print quality, and I’ll share a few not-quite-real-book images herebwhile I eagerly await the arrival of the very real thing.

I’m actually a little scared to look it over too closely in case I find mistakes I made. It’s kind of a given that I’ll find more than a few I-would-have-done-that-differenties or why-did-I-do-thats, but that’s all good, and part of the process and I should worry if I don’t find things I know I can do better now.

(note: there’s a bit more contrast in these photographs than what you’d see in actual book).

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new book beginnings ~ db

2013/03/292014/11/08 | kirsti

Further Proof

A few weeks ago I reviewed the second round of proofs for Dream Boats, including the fold and gather (pictured above).

Printed proofs are so, so, so very important. It’s written in my contracts that I am to receive, review and sign off on proofs before the book goes to print, but the crazy thing is this is only the third book where I’ve actually received a full set of proofs to review. Sometimes I’ve recieved a page, other times nothing. Proofing is costly in time and money, so every so often it gets ‘forgotten’ with sometimes disastrous results.

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