Brick by brick

My illustration process

Each month members of the illoguild answer a question together, and this month’s theme is: What is your illustration process?

I recently finished writing my first picture book manuscript, “Goodbye, House”, in which a small boy has to move from his beloved house following his parents’ divorce and relocate to a bigger, unfamiliar town. As I was drawing the rough sketches for the spreads I was inspired by my surroundings, a small town in the French Jura alps:

I sketched the town scene, trying to capture the typical windows with wooden shutters and rooftops with many chimneys. Once I had the layout of the street I started to plan the colours.

This scene from the book is focused on a House With A Yellow Door (that is how the boy names his new home) so that small patch of yellow had to stand out to the reader. I decided to use mostly complementary palette for the houses (variations of purple) to contrast the main focus of the illustration, the door, the car and the two main characters entering the house.

But all purple tones made the feeling of the scene too nocturnal when in fact it was supposed to be midday so I decided to add some warmer tones for the houses in the second row. I laid down the colour blocks and marked the floors of each house so I wouldn’t get lost when adding windows.

All that was left was to add the windows, the shutters and the chimneys - I intentionally toned down the details, only drawing a few passing silhouettes to complete the street scene and still keep the focus on the main narrative.

Here is the final colour version from my book dummy:

Be sure to check out the illoguild page on Monday to read how other members explain their illustration process

Until next time when I tell you more about my book dummy and the response it got at the recent Bologna children’s book fair 😊