Tag: illustrating books

My Creating Picture Books class is now being advertised. I have flyers up. I left some at the local schools. The local paper carried a press release. The local radio station announced it. That leaves me preparing for class.

I procrastinated. There were no names on the sign up sheet. A feeling of relief vied with disappointment.

Someone Signed Up

The first person is signed up. That leaves the class has an event. I am now preparing for class for real.

Anticipation is now vying with an intense desire to cancel the class. Yes, I have completed three picture books, three illustrated books and illustrated activity books. Does this make me good enough to teach this class?

Changes in the Course

The original course has worksheets to hand out. I was going to charge for the course which would pay for running off these worksheets. That turned into too big a hassle so the course is free. The worksheets may have to be cancelled.

Perhaps the library meeting room is set up for a powerpoint presentation. I haven’t done one in twenty years, but can probably manage one? Hum. Are my nerves and insecurities moving in?

Tackling the Fears

Such fears seem to plague many writers. Books never get finished or languish unpublished because of them.

Teachers can get these fears too. I always dreaded the first day of school. All those new faces, names to learn, new lesson plans were so terrifying.

My Creating Picture Book course will happen. There will be people taking it. The fears may be there, but they need to be squelched.

Preparing for class will help. Either a powerpoint presentation or poster board presentation is needed. A list of picture books to look through on the first day needs assembling.

The course is ready. I have edited and rewritten it more than once. All I have to do is hold on and walk into the room on that first day.

I’ve published three picture books and have a series in mind. Still, I don’t know that much about picture books.

Reading

One way to learn is by reading picture books. I’ve always liked to browse through them, rarely listing them on my reading list. There are so many good ones, I wanted to share those I’d read.

My Goodreads blog was a way to do this. I now read and review four to six picture books from my library weekly on my blog.

Another reason for reading so many of these books is to see the range of text and illustrations in them. Ones I’ve read run from ones with only pictures to one with no pictures at all.

The illustrations can be highly detailed, elaborate ones to those looking like museum paintings to casual comic book images. They can be painted, collages, line drawings, photographs or combinations.

My preference is watercolor. Recently I read a book about Tasha Tudor (“The Private World of Tasha Tudor”) and have requested some of her books. She uses watercolor and the images I saw in the book are highly detailed which takes great skill with watercolor.

Research

Another way to learn about picture books is to read books about how to create them. I am reading one now (“Writing With Pictures”).

The basic steps are what I already knew. This book is expanding on these, adding details and suggestions.

Planning and Implementing

There are a few sketches done now for my Agate and Opal series about two adventurous Nubian kids. As I look these over and consider others for these first two books, one about Opal and one about Agate, introducing them, I’m using the knowledge I’ve gained.

First off, my sketches don’t need to be perfect. This is hard for me as I constantly fight the mantra of not good enough. They only need to be true to my Nubian goat kids.

Secondly, I want to do a picture book series, not illustrated stories. That changes how I will do my text. The pictures tell the story. Text only adds a few bits of information.

Most of the text will be reserved for the information page at the end.

Putting ‘The End’ on a book is always exciting and a relief. This is especially true for a book that has taken years. Finishing “The Little Spider” is one of those.

I wrote the text draft years ago. That was the easy part. Picture books require illustrations. That was the hard part.

Getting Picture Book Illustrations

When the text got written, I did no drawing. I wrote. Period.

So I talked to several people who did draw. No one was willing to take this project on. So the text sat on my computer, moved to two new computers, waited.

Then I ended up doing the illustrations for “For Love of Goats”. Finding anyone else was not really an option as I wanted good illustrations for half a dozen different breeds of goats. They may all be goats, but they don’t look alike. It’s like both an Arabian and a Quarter Horse are both horses, but they don’t look exactly alike.

Gaining Confidence

After finding I could really do the illustrations, I got brave. I tackled the illustrations for “Waiting for Fairies”. The different animals weren’t that hard. People are hard to draw. I’m glad little children are so forgiving about illustrations.

So now I’m finishing “The Little Spider” illustrations. Actually all of them are done now. There are two things left.

One is a border for the last page about spider ballooning, the topic of the story. I could leave the text on its own, but a little border of the little spider running around the text would be fun.

What should I put on the cover? Obviously, the little spider goes on the cover. I haven’t decided what the spider will be doing or how the title and author name will go around it.

The Final Steps

Once I have those two things done, I can start the process of getting the book printed. Although there will be eBook versions, the conversions seem to distort the images. I don’t know how to fix this problem.

One thing is certain. Finishing “The Little Spider” will open up some writing time. Of course that is already filled with three other projects.