Writing & Publishing

Technique After some experimentation with new materials, I fell back on my tried and true method. Using a fine semi-transparent rag paper, which is pretty great all-round for pastels, markers, and colored pencils.  First, assembly-line style, I ruled the paper to 125% of the book’s size. (Always work larger than the final print size.) This paper…

Choosing the cover design   Things I like in a book cover: I love negative-space, also called white-space (which can be any color but in this case, it’s a shiny clean white). Negative space isn’t wasted space. The functional difference between a shovel and a pitchfork is the metal that’s missing. That missing metal has…

Adding color. A journey from. . . This. . . . . .to this! The story-boarding is done, necessary text changes have been made and all has been approved! Now comes the color. Mr. publisher says he doesn’t want I Love You too, I Love You Three confused with any previous books. Got the blues?…

Illustrating the Book… The Choices. This sweet book, I Love You Too, I Love You Three, (written by Wendy Tugwood, with my illustrations, and published by Firefly Books) turned out to be so well-paced, so well received, that it’s hard to believe there might be a challenge or two in the making of the art… but there were….

Illustrating the Book… Storyboarding. Once the direction and general style of the images for a book are settled, step one in the art-process of illustrating a kids’ book comes with the storyboard. Storyboarding solves the most basic issues in the appearance of the book, which are a whole bunch of things: style, format, continuity, composition,…

The Manuscript Arrives Join me in this series for a tour of the creation of a children’s book from conception to bookstore shelf. Wendy Tugwood’s story I Love You Too, I Love You Three landed in my email inbox in the spring of 2014. There was something magical about her gentle rhyming story. Over time we emailed and…

While rhyming text seems to fall in and out of favor, I’ve illustrated several rhyming books: I Promise I’ll Find You, Lightning Bug Thunder, and I Love You Too, I Love You Three. And they were all fun and a delight to work on. Over the last few years, I’ve found that whenever I write…

What Makes a Bestseller? Presumably, anyone with a laptop and spellcheck can write a bestseller and anyone with pencils and paper can illustrate one, and anyone with both can write and illustrate a bestseller. However… thousands upon thousands of books are published each year, but only a few rise to the top. Of course we…

Many a writer of children’s literature has felt that since their story is just 800 words, self-editing is fine. However, my view is that a second set of eyes never hurts. And if just one errant comma, or apostrophe, or typo is caught before publication, well, hallelujah. Bad punctuation can break hearts…“I’m sorry I love…