HEY LOVES! Summer break is coming to an end and I'm slowly shifting back into working mode. I definitely wouldn't mind a longer break, but duty calls and the next months will be exciting with Autumn and Winter projects! Hope you all had a relaxing Summer break too! And we're starting September with a celebration! O Caracol Espanhol e o Galo Badalo (something like The Spanish Snail and the Singing Rooster for my international friends) was published this July! It was my first illustrated book and I had the pleasure to draw 10 illustrations for Alfarroba. O Caracol Espanhol e o Galo Badalo by Carlos Nabais and Isilda Monteiro And as I've been promising all of you for months, I'm finally sharing the illustration process. We'll be looking at the inspirations, character studies, storyboards and finals. So sit tight, get your tea and let's start! Research & InspirationAt the begining of most projects, I start with research. The publisher sent the manuscript and I had the freedom to choose which scenes I wanted to illustrate. I picked 10 iconic scenes that would also ensure the story would be evenly divided. This story really matched my own aesthetic favourites. It is set in a small village and has a really cosy vibe to it, so I wanted the colours to include mostly warm greens and browns. I made a Pinterest board (find it here!) but also went through my own collection of vintage children's books. CHARACTER STUDIESBefore starting to plan the storyboard I wanted to have a clear idea on how the characters would look. I scribbled some concept sketches for the main characters, the Snail, Mouse, Sparrow and Rooster as I knew I had the freedom to work on the other characters later on. Timorato was based on a field mouse since it made sense he would be found in the countryside. Even though the story is for older children, I wanted the characters to be expressive so I made sketches of them with different facial expressions and specific poses, like flying, dancing or, in the case of the Sparrow, having a bath and splashing water in every direction. The Rooster needed to have really colourful feathers since he's so proud and full of himself! The Snail is quiet and friendly, so I was going for a common snail. Since he's a traveler, the publisher suggested I added some stickers to his shell and that made him more unique. StoryboardStoryboards and the first studies are probably what takes me longer to complete. I like to have the illustrations planned before I jump to finals. This way there's a lower probability I'll have to redo a whole illustration and it also makes it easier for the client to request changes. I always keep at home old paper sheets which I like to use for first sketches. This way I'm not afraid to mess up at this stage and I can doodle more freely. This is also why I never sketch digitally, it makes me so fixated on small details that it simply doesn't work for me. At this stage I was also really curious and excited to see how the scenes would look painted with gouache, so I couldn't resist and made a quick scribble of the first illustration, where the Snail meets the Mouse for the first time. I cleaned the sketches a bit, added some shading on the darker areas and scanned all the sheets. As I mentioned, I wanted the colours for this story to be warm and include lots of greens and browns. But I also wanted them to be a bit muted to give them a bit of a vintage touch. So I picked some soft greens and warm browns, grabbed my digital brush and began adding colour to the pages. I then added some strong reds, yellows and oranges to add more contrast. There was this illustration where the Mouse, Sparrown and chickens watch the Rooster from the top of a tower and I was having trouble making everything fit in the same illustration. If I included the tower, the characters inside would be too small to be seen, if I showed the inside of the tower, the Rooster would be too small instead. So the publisher suggested I painted the Rooster running away and then included the other animals in a vignette at the left and it worked wonders! With the storyboard and colour studies approved, everything was ready to move to finals! FINALSI decided I wanted to use gouache for this book, since it would give it that wholesome traditional vibe, which I believed would match the story perfectly. I did a little cheat on the double page illustrations: my scanner only scans up to A4 sheets, so I taped two sheets together at the back and painted as usual. I think in one or two you can kind of notice a bit, but since that would be in the middle of the book you can't really see it in the final product. And since some pages would consist of text only, I edited a couple of small illustrations and made their backgrounds transparent, so the publisher could use them to decorate those pages. And the book turned out super nice! I love how they printed it on a soft matte paper, so it matches the traditional illustrations so well! And the hard cover makes it just perfect for children. If you'd like to order the book, you can find it on the publisher's website here! For my Portuguese readers, you can also find it online on most national bookshops (Bertrand, Wook, Almedina, Fnac...etc)! Huge thanks to Andreia Salgueiro and the team at Alfarroba. It was an honor to bring this book to life. This was a long post but if you're still here, thank you! I hope you enjoyed seeing a bit of the behind the scenes of bringing a book to life, I always love to see those myself and it usually helps me a lot, so I wanted to share my process as well.
Enjoy the last days of Summer and let's embrace the soft breeze and the first leaves announcing the next season! Love, Inês
2 Comments
Inês Dinis
9/2/2022 02:26:18 pm
Thank you so much Malina! ♥♥
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