It takes approximately 3 months to illustrate a 12 spread picture book and often starts with me doing character sketches in pencil first and maybe a few colour samples. I then do tiny sketches called ‘thumbnails’ to plan the book page by page. It's then drawn up to full size in pencil. Then there is a lot of adjustments that goes back and forth to the publisher. Then I do tiny colour samples for each page which I use as a colour guide. After which I go to finished colour art which takes about 20 days provided there are no disasters along the way (like spilling tea over the cover art). I use soft pastels which are powdery like chalk, which I smudge in with my fingers onto tinted pastel paper. I finish of with strokes of pastel for things like grass, pastel pencils to do the eyes and fur of animals and finally a wee dot of white gouache paint for the highlight of the eyes.

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