The Progress Continues
Hello! You still here?
(crickets chirping…)
Um yes, I suppose it has been a while. I’ve been busy! Partly because I now have a day job, one of those necessities for the so-called “pre-published” like me, and partly because I’ve been working on my dummy book.
I’ve finished the “writing a hopefully cohesive plot with hopefully interesting characters” part, and worked out the “storyboard of little illegible scribbles that are hopefully well paced.”
After that, I read in a book that the Great Howard Pyle used to do fifty thumbnail sketches for every illustration he made, in order to make sure that the composition was right. FIFTY! That would mean that, with 36 pages or so, I’d be drawing 1800 of them. That was a little too much dedication for me, considering I want to finish by July 30th, so I did two. (Sometimes three.) And then I arranged my “winners” on cards so I could easily shuffle everything around.
Like this: (pages 6-23)
My current goal is to take each of these small sketches and work it into a more developed drawing. In particular I’m trying to figure out any remaining issues of composition and the perspective in any tricky scenes.
I had one strange three-point perspective to do, and had my trusty patent illustrator (I recommend keeping one of these at home) work it out for me:
The illustration will only use a small part of this, perhaps something like the sketch below. (Of course, when I work out more of the details and decide on the material/lighting for the underside of the table and chairs, it will hopefully be cleaner and make a bit more sense. But for now, here’s the current idea for pages 8-9, when our hero smells something delicious and climbs the furniture to investigate.)
it looks great