I am making a lot of progress on Molly's Teddy Bear Adventure and am very excited about this next book. I have eight more illustrated pages to complete. (woo hoo!)
Each time I finish a page I wonder, how on earth and I going to capture the story via illustration on the next page! This is where the fun comes. I let it stew in my head for a few days until I come up with an idea. Once I get the idea, I sketch out what I have envisioned. This involves drawing a rough sketch of each individual character and any objects I wish to place on the page. Once the sketches are complete I scan each of my drawings into the computer maneuvering them around on the page. I do this to ensure the pieces will all fit in a way to tell the tale on that particular page. Once I am sure my sketches will work, I then use them as a template to make the individual drawings, which I then again scan and align on the page.
This weekend I spent a lot of time working on two pages at once and feel quite accomplished. I am happy with the final product and would like to share the before and afters of these completed pages.
On these pages, Molly is playing with Billy, who was really quite toothy and his curly-haired sister they called Ruthie. Molly has a special teddy bear, named Pierre who is with her all the time. On this day, Billy did something that was not very keen. He grabbed Teddy from Molly and there him up in the air, A trolley went by and there went Pierre.
Below you can see the before and after for each of the pages. 16 pages down and 16 more to go. Time to start stewing on how I am going to illustrate the next page.