The book I’m illustrating for Diana Lesire Brandmeyer, The Trouble With Ralph, is on it’s way to completion. (Diana also writes adult fiction and a blog – check out her website) If you had told me at anytime in my life that I’d illustrate a book, especially one that wasn’t mine, I’d never have believed it.
This journey started in January with me accepting the job to re-illustrate a picture book that Diana had written awhile ago. The original illustrator couldn’t be found,so Amazon took it out of print. Diana found me through my artwork on this blog. I was amazed that my work prompted her to ask me to do her book. I was scared to accept the job, but Diana was so nice and not in a hurry, that I just had to give it a shot. If I didn’t, I’d always wonder if I could’ve actually illustrated a book.
It took a whole month of experimenting with different mediums. Was I going to use digital? Watercolor? Chalk pastels? After trying all of them, I found I was most comfortable with oil pastels. You could achieve bright colors and blend in shading with such a control that I didn’t feel in the other mediums.
Next came character creation. My hero was a goat so this involved a few weeks of googling goats and sketching many different types before the real “Ralph” emerged. After Ralph came his owner, a little girl by the name of Hayley. She, too, took a week or so of sketches to emerge with her brown curls.
After the characters were established, work on the cover began. I learned a lot about background and scenery as the cover emerged. Gradually the pages got easier as I got more familiar with what can be done with pastels. After sketching Ralph so many times, by the third page he took his place in the scene easily.
I set June as my deadline for having all eight illustrations done and here I sit with all eight hanging in “the kitchen studio”, as it’s come to be referred to. This brings us to the pre-publication stage. The art is complete and now the real work begins. We are first going to e-publish it, then move on to printed copies. These days my work consists of learning to format and obtaining copyrights and ISBN numbers. My next benchmark is to have the book up on Amazon by late August.
I am moving about in a world that I never knew anything about. Having no schedule, no boss, no workplace to go to, but yet a job to get done that I was responsible to someone else for, kind of left me in a panic. The work was not tangible according to instructions. It was creative work that had to be totally born of me. This was scary. Very unstructured, but yet a product that had to be produced. There were many days filled with doubt. Doubt I could come up with the pictures, doubt they were good enough, and doubt I could finish them in a reasonable amount of time. I cannot count the days that just sitting down to a new blank page made me get right back up and do something else.
I learned today that it was that resistance to the creative process that I was afraid of, because wherever there is a process, there is a change of some kind, and change can be scary. It was the resistance to begin on the blank page that was the difficult part – the part where the doubt crept in. Once I put the pencil to the page, the fear turned to effort, and that which was inside of me was set free.
And so, as another day goes by, when dealing with change, look out for that resistance – don’t let it sabotage the journey you’re trying to take, and… I have written.
Today’s page in Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way, Everyday:
Ride the wave – you’re doing great! 🙂
I’m so excited to see this book come to life with your art!
Diana