Two years ago I broke my leg and without work or anything beyond the reach of the couch to distract me for a couple weeks, I got serious about working on my long brewing children's book.
The stories came from my own childhood and were honed in my adulthood, by retelling them to my kids. So they are very much a part of me and can be hard to let into the world. My huge insecurities come out in spades when entertaining the notion of producing something this big. I'm fine with doodling some space cats or robot sharks for no reason but this is my life's dream here. I have always been working towards one day becoming an illustrator, and despite being light years away from an actual career, this is really the closest I have ever been.
So, I really did just spill beer all over three pages of this finished work while trying to show it off to the neighbor kid, and through some miracle it totally is beer proof. Thank the gods!
This is an illustration I finished maybe a year ago, followed by the one I did this afternoon. One great thing about taking this project on is that I have gotten much faster and more confident in my technique ( if you can call it that). I know the steps well enough that I don't have to second guess myself as much. It's just pencil sketch, colored pencil sketch, erase, paint and finish with colored pencil outlines. So what took me maybe two days last year and ended up needing to be touched up and eventually totally scrapped, took me a couple of hours this afternoon. That kind of improvement is even more satisfying than the product.
Here's the before and after. I chose to redo because the line work and shapes were awkward and also because the characters looked flat and bored, like they couldn't make eye contact. Also I keep looking for ways to sneak fun stuff in, like the squirrel stuffing his face. Yay cookies!!!
