garden waste

Well they say 'write what you know'... I know exactly where this particular idea for the book comes from. Kenzie the husky does more poop per day than any other dog I know and, with a four year old sharing the garden with her, I do spend an inordinate amount of time clearing up after her. Like the Growing Boy, I too am forever engaged in a gardening battle I cannot win - I'm hoping he will triumph where I do not! That's artistic licence for you, if only real life was as simple.

Here I'm demonstrating the convenience and lucky happinstance (is that a word?!) of illustrating while making a cup of tea - in a moment of inspirado, that teabag came in handy for added 'mess'!

In an exciting garden update: I have one red tomato!!! I'm so excited, I may even post a picture!

a new furrow

After much procrastinating, the first new illustration visual is finished! The one on the left is the old one, on the right the new illustration for the same bit of text. I'm being inundated with design work when all I really want to do is paint. Unfortunately, the design work pays the bills, but I'm managing to squeeze the book in at the end of each evening (then I have to try and make myself go to bed instead of getting carried away with the illustrating!). Next up, the pooing dog...

can you dig it?

The thumbnails are coming thick and fast, I'm finally working out the exact details of how the beginning gets to the middle and the middle to the end...! It seems obvious I know but, while the bare bones of the story have been quite clear to me for some time it hasn't always been so clear how to say everything I want to in each spread. Although the text is quite minimal, the pictures have to convey much more than the words themselves.

Plus, I have a tendency to go to the dark side, I blame all those fairy stories from my childhood when Grandmama actually did get eaten by the wolf... It's probably why I love Maurice Sendak's work so much too. I like being a little bit scary with my work and I think kids like being a little bit scared, but in this case portraying the situation too realistically (as in the old visual above) was beginning to resemble a story of child neglect. I think adding a more surreal reason for his family being disinterested (with the line up of daredevil portraits on the stairs) works better.

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!