The Making of The Mermaid's Gift: My Illustration Process

A behind the scenes look at the making of a picture book

Color me excited! My new book, The Mermaid’s Gift written by Claudia Cangilla McAdams and published by Pelican Publishing is out and about in the real world. So I thought I'd share my illustration process for this book as a fun introduction for anyone who hasn't bought it yet. (Don't worry there are links at the end for where you can get your very own copy.)

A version of this post can be found on Dani Duck: Artist Obsure as part of Smart Dummies.

After illustrating eight picture books and creating five dummies for my own manuscripts, each a bit of an experiment, I’m happy to say that I finally feel like I have a pretty good system worked out.

Quick read through 

This quick read through opens my mind to the world of the story. I then let my imagination explore the possibilities without any limitations to specific pages or scenes. The process from first contact to contract takes a long time, so this story had a long time to percolate.

Reference research

Pinterest is a ton of fun for this. I set up folders for each project and collect images for reference and inspiration. In this case, colorful Burano, Italy (look it up on Google. If you’re feeling blue, this place will perk you right up); lace, lots and lots of lace research; historical photos of Burano and the lace museum there. I even used Google Earth to walk around the island.

Character sketches 

I work out clothes, hair styles, facial features, culture, and age. I sketch the main characters from a variety of angles, different facial expressions, moods, emotions, keeping mind the need to keep the main characters consistent throughout with the same clothes, hairstyle, facial features, eye colors, etc.

Text Dummy 

I print out the manuscript and break it up into 16 sections. I fold 9 sheets of legal or ledger paper in half and staple them in the middle with a special stapler I bought years ago for this purpose. I cut up the text and tape each section in its spread roughly where I think it might go, telling the story with the text — one chunk for the entire spread, or broken up with some on the left and some on the right. Since Mermaid is a retelling and set in the 1800s, I decided to go with a classic feel, keeping the text in blocks, but incorporating them into the illustrations. I played around with borders and copy blocks, but dropped that in the final sketch stage.

Brainstorm Scenes 

Blue sky thinking with my husband bouncing around ideas about the overall look, world, setting, perspectives, angles, pov, lighting. Playing with the best way to illustrate each scene adding to the story in unique ways. For this book I really wanted drama, which I achieved with lighting, angles, and unique perspectives.

“I love your boldness in composing the pages. Many illustrators are timid about the interplay between form and function, and your work is like a breath of fresh air.” ~ Johanna Rotondo-McCord, Artist.

More reference research 

This stage is pretty much ongoing and so much easier now days. I remember the days of having to go up to the reference library on 42nd street to get images. For this project, I did a lot of lace research — patterns, tutorials, various types of lace, designs, styles, materials, etc. I think that all paid off since I have had many people ask how I created the lace, and have complimented me on the beauty and realistic feel of the lace.

Thumbnails

With sketchbook and ballpoint pen, I roughly block out the scenes I have bubbling in my imagination after the brainstorming session. With this project, I established a sort of zig-zag pattern through the spreads, leading the eye through the story with a variety of spots, full spreads and text placement that would keep the eye moving how I wanted.

Sketch Dummy 

Sketch and explore scenes building on initial rough thumbnails. My ink sketches are rough at this stage. I scan those, clean them up a bit and print each spread as close to actual size as I can. With marker paper, several good ol’ #2 pencils, and a kneaded eraser, I set to work creating the final detailed pencil sketches. Marker paper is see-through without needing a light box, but not as smeary as tracing paper. I scanned those sketches and put them together back in their spreads. I cleaned them up, made pngs which I made into a pdf and emailed it to the AD. He came back to me with only a few revisions.

Value and Color Thumbnails 

I made a contact sheet in Photoshop of the sketches on an 11x17 document. I added a layer with my paper in a gray tone, creating an overall stormy feel. A second layer for value, establishing mood, and a third layer for color studies. I created a limited palette, keeping in mind the stormy feel of the story and moving to a light and happy feeling in the end.

“You have perfectly captured the moods of the various scenes, giving the story "life" in your depictions of the throwing of the fishing net, the ferociousness of the storm at sea, the mermaid's creation of the lace, and so on.” ~ Claudia Cangilla McAdam

Final Painting Begins

I paint in Photoshop with my own brushes, textured papers, and color palettes, plus a ton of layers. I could do a whole-nother post about the ups and downs of finishing a full book. There were days I thought I was brilliant, and days when I felt like a total fraud with no right to get to draw and paint for a living. Every book has this stage no matter how much I’ve learned and grown and figured out what I’m doing.

 

Finish the Dang Thing Already 

And then comes the finishing. This may be the hardest of all stages for me. I have a resistance to finishing things. I don’t know why. That’s just the crazy way I am. One night my husband told me to sit and finish one at a time. I had the final highlights and finishing touches and fixes and whatnots to do. When I finished one I’d shout it out. I was reward with a DING-DING-DING and a compliment of some encouraging sort. Then it was back to the next one.

I finally finished them and sent them off to the Art Director. The end result: A love fest with my art, and an offer for another book. Cody and Grandpa’s Christmas Tradition written by Gary Metivier. Stay tuned for updates on that project.

Thanks for reading my long ramble.

Live, laugh, and learn!

Book Trailer

Now, as I promised, The Mermaid's Gift is available at:
Barnes and Noble
Pelican Publishing
Amazon

Getting Illustrator Recognition

About standing up for ourselves as artists

Every so often I do a google search for various things: my name, my design company name, and my book titles. Yesterday I did a search for the book I illustrated for Pelican Publishing, The Mermaid's Gift by Claudia Cangilla McAdam. I came across something interesting and wanted to let you know how it played out. I found a fun website selling my book. There's a wonderful review of the book and a nice ending note about how beautiful the illustrations are. But... my name was nowhere to be found.

This is a problem I've noticed around the web on various sites and social media. Often times illustrators don't get the credit they deserve whether its for illustrated books, posters, packaging etc. Being an introvert, it's not easy for me to speak up. So, part of my campaign to make sure illustrators are getting recognition is:

Be Bold and Brave

©Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

So, I contacted the website and politely pointed out the problem and informed them that illustrators, especially for picture books, need to get credit as well. Guess what? They responded. They added my name! Yay! The last paragraph of a beautiful description and review now reads:

This gorgeous picture book beautifully illustrated by Traci Van Wagoner is an inspiring  gift for all ages!

I'm sending a shout out to Isabella Centofanti at Italian Children's Market for not only carrying my book, but also doing the right thing.
Thank you!

Always keep in mind, it can't hurt to ask.

Have you noticed an overall lack of illustrators getting credit? Any other illustrators out there notice this problem? Have you done anything to help get illustrator credit? Artists unite.

The Mermaid's Gift, Pelican Publishing, 2015

 "The Mermaid's Gift stands out among the many versions of this tale for its showing (not preaching) of the very qualities we hope to instill in our children: love, courage, faith, and perseverance."
Italian Children's Market



More posts about The Mermaid's Gift.
See sketches, process and more.

Click "Books" to find additional links for purchasing the book

Good News -- The Mermaid's Gift

I am thrilled to share the news that I have been contracted by Pelican Publishing to illustrate a new picture book, The Mermaid's Gift by Claudia Cangilla McAdams. I'm very excited to be involved in helping to bring this story to life. Here is a sneak peek for you.

The Mermaid's Gift is a legend of a hungry village who received the gift of lace from a mermaid.


The woman of the village of Burano use the mermaid's gift as a pattern to create their famous and beautiful lace.


I've really enjoyed picking up a pencil again to sketch out this book. I usually sketch in ink, but for this book, I want a more realistic feel with moody undertones and pencil worked best. I am looking forward to painting. I will be painting these in Photoshop with my own paper, textures, and brushes. I love being able to use my traditional media training to paint on the computer. Stay tuned to see the progress of this book which is due out in the fall of 2015.

Getting the Job

Since my picture book, The Mermaid's Gift written by Claudia Cangilla McAdams is hitting the shelves this month from Pelican Publishing, I thought I'd share a series of posts giving you some background to the book and how it came to be, starting with the interesting way I got the project in the first place. Well, I hope you think it's interesting anyway.

I have to admit I was hesitant at first (many years ago now) to join in the FB craze (as well as other social media), but I'm glad I did. One day as I was scrolling through different feeds with a variety of FB groups, and I came across a post in Children's Book Illustrations by Kevin Johnson, AD at Pelican Publishing, looking for an illustrator. I was like, oh, cool, a possible illustration job. I shared it on my timeline and then went back to the current project since I had spent up all my social media time for the morning.

An hour or so later, my husband was doing his morning read through on the iPad when he shouted up at me, "Hey, what's going on with this illustration job post?"

I responded with an, "Oh yeah, I saw that this morning, but I haven't done anything about it."

Frankly I was a bit jaded to the possibility of this being a real job since I've been working on Elance and most of the picture book jobs on there are a joke with the writer only wanting to pay $200 or so to illustrate a full book. But my husband urged me to get on it and send an email at least.

So I did. I introduced myself, giving my schpill about my experience and passion for children's books, a rundown of the way I work, links to my online portfolios, followed up with a closing paragraph about how excited I am about the title and the possibilities. I still wasn't holding out much hope of this being a real job. Like I said, a bit jaded.

I was happy that I finally finished a mermaid painting a short time before, so I sent that along with a few other samples.

He responded later that day with a very positive note and said he'd pass along my samples. Good news. Now, I was letting some excitement leak in. Hey, like my blog title says, celebrate the little things.

The next day I got another email saying the publisher liked some of my samples, but still wasn't sure I was right for this project. She wanted to see more natural colors and realism.

She likes the style that you use on the image of the mermaids on the rocks but she doesn’t want the whimsical colors for this book she want’s things to look natural. The sky blue, the mermaid’s hair a natural color, etc.

She asked if you could provide a sketch of two characters from the book since she wanted to see if you could do what she wanted. So, I was back to being a bit disappointed. That jaded part of me again since so many jobs I'd pitched on over the last year, they wanted free samples to prove I could do what I said I could do. That's what a portfolio is for, dang it! But I did understood since they wanted to make sure I could do a bit more realistic than many of the samples I'd sent which leaned to more stylized characters. I emailed that I would try to fit in the time to do some sketches over the weekend and also expressed my concern in doing this and hoping it would put me on short list. Kevin assured me it would and that he really wanted me to work on this book.

So, I did, and this is what I sent on Monday morning.

I crossed my fingers and went back to work on another project with a tight deadline. I tried not to think about, but you know how that goes. Every few seconds Oooh, maybe I'll get that mermaid book. How fun would that be?
  
 Wednesday afternoon I got an email back. "You're in!"

Yay! Happy dancing.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I got the job for The Mermaid's Gift, written by Claudia Cangilla McAdams. Thanks for listening.

For your convenience, I've included links to where you can buy my book online and also a link to the really cool book trailer.

Available at:
Barnes and Noble
Pelican Publishing
Amazon


Book Trailer

 

Don’t Fret, Fred, Your Day Will Come (hopefully sooner, since it’s already later)

Fred from Don't Fret, Fred Version 1

I’m happy to say that Fred is finally ready (again) and has ventured out into the wide world all shiny and new.

I revised and polished the manuscript, sketched out the dummy and completed (or should I say, redid and reillustrated) three samples spreads and it is now out into the world for consideration by agents and editors. Whoopee! And to tickle your curiosity, it is being seriously considered somewhere. To be named later if it comes through.

Don’t Fret, Fred is a wild romp of a tale in which Fred discovers that exciting things can happen when you look up from your e-things and use your imagination.

 This story has pretty much always been about that. Even though the journey has meandered to and fro, the heart of the story, the bare bones of a bored kid, Gram knitting and telling a wild yarn which spins out of control and Fred having bring them home has remained the same. Gramps has always been like, here we go again. The happenings, the specific interactions has changed, but the core has remained the same.

This picture book has gone through three major revisions (not to mention the many, many edits, and fussing with words, paragraphs, spreads.) I sent out the manuscript alone many years ago. I got personal rejections with editors who liked the humor but felt there wasn't enough there to pass the last hurdle to acquire it. After a pile of rejections, I put it in a drawer where it sat with all those rejection letters for a looooooooooong time.

Until…

My nephew stirred interest again when he casually said one day, "don't fret, Fred." He remembered the fun repeating line from my book from when I read it to him years before. That gave me heart. I pulled it back out, reworked it with my husband and business partner and my wonderful crit buddies (where would I be without their invaluable input?), and I hammered away at it till I got something I was happy with again.

So, good to go, I created a dummy book and finished sample illustrations.

Fred had his debut showing at the SCBWI Winter Conference in NY, I also sent it out to to editors, agents, and hit the twitter pitch parties. I received some interest here and there, but I wasn't quite happy yet and neither was anyone who saw it. Something niggled at me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. In one of the twitter parties, I saw someone was interested in a book with yarn bombing and -- boom! -- the seed of an idea was planted. Then taking a walk in my neighborhood (on what we call the chicken walk) I came across this:

Yarn bomb on my dog walk

And the idea clicked. That’s what I needed! Gram is a yarn bomber. I went back to work.

Edit. Revise. Redraw. Sketch. Paint.

New Fred sketch adding yarn bombing

A new manuscript, dummy book and sample illustrations were born now with a yarn bombing gram. You see her behind the scenes yarn bombing all the places they land, which in the end gives Fred an idea to help bring them home. I think this has tied it all together with humor, surprise, and a bucket load of imagination

Okay, I was done. Sent out some more and received a smattering of interest. Then I received a great comment on twitter from Guiseppe Castellano which basically said (I can’t find the actual comment), “fun, but strange there are purple outlines.”

This was something that had been niggling at me, but I’d ignored for many reasons. It was an illustration style I liked and had developed for various reasons which I won’t go into here. I came to a conclusion that I needed and should and wanted to redo the final illustrations yet again. I wanted to loosen up and have fun just painting and breaking free from a conception of what my style was or should be. So I did, and I had a ton of fun. And this is what happened.

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

There you have it, the basic progression of this book. It's been a long road, and now I hope I'm at a point where others will enjoy it too and someone will be willing to take it on. One can hope.

And here's my query schpill:

Don't Fret, Fred by Traci Van Wagoner

Cut off from the electronic world, Fred is worried a day with Gram and Gramps in the boonies will be boring. Boy, was he wrong. While balling Gram’s yarn (yawn!), he asks her for a story. Crazy and out-of-this-world things begin to happen, spinning them up into a wild yarn of an adventure bigger than all of them. Fred will have to use his rusty imagination to get them back home before they are lost in space.

Dummy book available upon request.



I would love to hear what you think of Fred and his yarn bombing Gram. And please feel free to share any pictures or stories you have of yarn bombing in your neighborhood.


If you'd like to see more of my illustration process, click here to see the making of The Mermaid's Gift by Claudia McAdam, published by Pelican Publishing.

Thanks ever so much for sharing in my journey.

The Mermaid's Gift

I'm so happy to be able to share this amazing book trailer for The Mermaid's Gift created by the author Claudia Cangilla McAdams with the expert help of brother, Chris Cangilla. I think it's amazing. Enjoy!

Coming Soon!

The Mermaid's Gift
Written by Claudia Cangilla McAdam
Illustrated by Traci Van Wagoner
Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company
ISBN: 978-1455621088

Available for preorder at:
Barnes and Noble
Pelican Publishing
Amazon


Book Trailer