I published my very first blog post on this book illustration process on January 10, 2009. Exactly four years and 3 months later I have a finished, final book in my hands.
This was a very long, very exhausting journey but I am so pleased with the printed book; my publisher took a lot of care with the production, and I couldn’t be happier with the final result.
Here’s a little tour of the book, after the jump:
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.
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).
Kirsti Anne Wakelin | picture book illustration 