slow growth

It's been a crazy week, finding time to finish the first illustration is proving difficult. Hopefully it will not be long now and I think it is working better now than before. My head is buzzing with ideas - I have to rush to the sketchbook these days to record everything before I forget it!

beginning to bloom

The first colour visual is underway - not really enough done yet to see how it will turn out, but it helps me to see it on screen too... The muted colours are important at the start of the book. As his environment changes and grows, I will add more colour. Next stage to follow...

preparing the ground

I'm finding lots of inspiration for the Growing Boy in the garden, especially in my little greenhouse, perhaps that's why I have suddenly found the enthusiasm to look at the book again. Looking forward to a weekend of sketching tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and onions...

Meanwhile, I have a literal blank canvas prepared to work up the first visual. I deliberately used the board which the old spread languished on for a year - a clean slate.

pruning

Now I've started again almost from scratch, it has become much easier to see which parts of the book were not working - and how to fix them. I'm not nearly so unhappy about losing spreads that I had become attached to (and stuck with) and I can see already how the new pages have become so much more lively. The book had clearly been stagnating for some time but the changes have renewed my enthusiasm for it!

sowing seeds

Sketched this new thumbnail spread down quickly last night, before I forget it! I've decided (after a year!) that it works much better if the boy starts from seeds (rather than being given a seedling as in my original text). I'm being inspired by my own little greenhouse I think, so although I don't feel like I've been producing much in the way of roughs, I guess doing the actual growing is helping me get a feel for the book...

green shoots

I'm finally finding time to work on this and I think this blog is going to be extremely useful for me. Having a space (less cluttered than my sketchbook!) to organise, collate and review my ideas, combined with a 'diary' of my thoughts - very handy. It will also be interesting to see how long I can keep the gardening references going for the post titles!!

My first thoughts for the boy character are above but, having procrastinated and struggled with it for nearly a year, as posted earlier I eventually had to admit defeat. The book wasn't working and definitely not developing as I saw it in my mind, so I have started again. The decision, once made, was something of a relief!

What I have in my head is much cleaner, with simplified lines and very expressive body language. I want to concentrate on the changes to the character's environment as it develops and not get bogged down in irrelevant detail.

My 'Wind' illustration was done fairly quickly and as a very personal response to Wordsworth's poem, Surprised by Joy - Impatient as the Wind. I was very moved by the poem and its expression of loss, and I think that's one of the reasons the image works.

One of my weaknesses as an illustrator (and this has always been so), is my tendency to overwork things long after I should have stopped, losing the immediacy and emotional power of the original roughs. So, now I will try to keep the immediacy for the Growing Boy illustrations - tricky when I've been living with them in my head for so long!

Thumbnail and first roughs above. The devil will be in the rendering of the final artwork! I have to work up one spread at least, to find the best medium and style to achieve what I am seeing in my head. Will post the progress...

poor neglected seedling...

My poor little 'growing boy' is being neglected at the moment as I'm still working on the Latvian illustration for the Italian exhibition. It has to be in Italy by 30th June!!! However, somewhere in the back of my head I'm garnering lots of real life inspirado for the book - I'm growing tomatoes, lettuce, peppers and spring onions (not to mention a pumpkin and a gourd) and all in freezing grey Scotland... and when I'm finished using them for reference, I get to eat them!