Q & A with Mr. Quindlen’s Class

April 23, 2018

For the past few weeks I have been getting some really fantastic questions from the 4th grade class at Bethel Springs Elementary School, home of the Garnet Valley Trailblazers Club. My first question came from a student named Carsen:

 

Here was my answer:

 

Then I answered a question from Lukas:

 

Then I saw that Ethan had asked:

I love this question, but I felt I couldn’t answer it with just words. I needed to illustrate how I create my illustrations step-by-step, and show what kind of supplies I use. After all, I am an illustrate-or.

Each illustration I create requires a multi-step process from brainstorming an idea to creating and sending the final art to be published. In a picture book, that’s 32 pages (or 16 spreads), a front cover, endpapers, a title page, and back matter. For each of these pages I create roughs, thumbnails, thumbnail revisions, sketches, sketch revisions, color sketches, color sketch revisions, tracings, and final art. Revisions are made as I receive feedback from my publisher on each stage I present to them. Some revisions I create for myself until I am happy with how things look.

It’s a process.

So for the next few days I am going to show you my process using one of my books as an example. I think I’ll use my forthcoming book, Belle’s Journey: An Osprey Takes Flight, because it was this time last year that I worked on that book, and right now all over the Northern Hemisphere of this planet, baby ospreys are hatching and beginning their own journeys.

I’ll post a link to Twitter @katesnowbird with each step so you don’t miss a thing. Watch this space—!