My process to creating a book

As I complete the final stages of book number 5, Gracie’s Glasses, I thought I would share a little information about the steps I take to create a book.    

The first step, obviously, is coming up with an idea.  Once I have a subject for my story, I develop some characters and search for a quote that will go along with the storyline.   In the case of Gracie’s Glasses, I used my grand-dog and grand-cat as characters for this story, Gracie, and Lucy.

Writing the story isn’t usually too difficult.  It seems like once I get the first line or two going, the story just flows into my head.  The hardest part of this portion of the process is making my story rhyme.  

Once the story has been written I begin the illustrations.  This is the portion of the process that seems daunting when I start.  Wow, 35-40+ pages of illustrations to come up with! Where do I begin?

I do all my work in PowerPoint.  I know, that seems odd, right?  This was the most cost effective tool I found for formatting my books.  The first step here is to divide out my pages, which sentences will make the best page breaks and places for illustrations.  I format all my text to the correct font and size.  And now I have the beginnings of my book. A clean slate for my illustrations.  

Now it is time to start my sketches. I really love, love, LOVE to create my characters. It is a little intimidating at first.  But so much fun to come up with the drawings.  I just sketch these out on plain white paper, in pencil. All of my pages are not illustrated as a whole picture.  I draw each item/character on the page, individually.  Here we have a sketch of Lucy, looking all juicy after the fish bowl fell.

After my sketches for the page are complete, I scan each of these pencil drawings into my computer and place on the page in my Powerpoint document.  This way I can ensure the drawings will fit together.  I move them around to make sure they will fit appropriately on the page.  Below is an example page with the individual drawings placed on the page.

Now that I have the sketches outlined on the page, I am ready to start coloring.  I trace each of my sketches onto my illustration paper and begin to color!  I use Prismacolor brush tip markers to finalize these illustrations.  Sometimes I have to color a drawing several times before I get it right.  Maybe, I didn’t like the color I chose or the way I did the eye’s or nose or perhaps I just plain messed up!  Here is Lucy, all juicy, once again, the colored version! 

Once I have completed the illustrations, I scan each of them into my computer, just as I did the sketches.  I then import them to a page and line them up, just as I did the sketches. 

All of my drawings are outlined in a black marker. 
There are two reasons for this, one is, I think they look sharper.  The second reason, it gives a guideline for me to remove the background in PowerPoint.  If I were to just bring the drawing in scanned, it will show the entire scan area, not just the drawing.  By removing the background, the black lines help lasso the area to keep. See below an example of the drawing of Lucy, all juicy, when first scanned into the document.  I don't want all that white area. 


Below, is a visual of how this is done.

The white background of the scanned image, no good!

By formatting the image to remove the background and mark areas to keep and delete (in purple),

the image shows correctly on the page.

I import all the illustrated drawings to the page, remove the background, move to the correct spot on the pages and now, ta da, I have a finished page!!

As you can see, the pictures overlap the sides of the actual page in my PowerPoint document.  The images bleed off the side of the page, but only the portion of the image is visible in the final product.  

Here is what the final pages look like for this example.

Some of my pages bleed from one page to the next.  
Here is an example of this. 
(uh-oh, this gives away how the fish bowl fell!)

And that my friends, is the process I take to complete a book. 
Look for Gracie's Glasses on Amazon.com very soon!!