To paraphrase General Patton, “Children’s Book illustration is hell!” Or at least it can be. I’m not talking about the dismal state of the business these days. The publishing world has not been spared from our country’s economic woes. No, I am talking about the simple act of creating a picture.
I recently spent a week and a half battling a sample illustration for a story I wrote called “Ten Little Wiener Dogs”. This is to be sent to my agent who will then try to find a home for it. Here’s the final illustration, by the way:

They found a chair to sit upon - finally!
The problem I was having was with the chair. The chair is, in a way, a central character to the book. It’s in every illustration. What changes from page to page is the number of wiener dogs on that chair.
I just could not find the right color combination! I must have done about twelve different paintings. Fortunately, I was able to use my copy machine to reproduce the black and white images, which saved me a lot of redrawing.
Here’s one of the failed attempts –

The blue was a little too dark. And the brown in the blanket got too muddy.
Here’s another –

I thought the tan would help the dogs stand out more. But the purple blanket just did not fit and the dogs were kind of blending in with the background.
What I would do is complete a painting and let it sit a while. Sometimes, when you’ve been staring at a picture too long, you lose your objectivity. Your mind either tells you it’s better than it is, or worse.
Here’s another tan chair –

Still way too yellow. But the blanket and pillow were not too distracting.
I tried all colors, despite my instincts that a particular one would not work. I was getting desperate. What was driving me nuts was that this really should not have been a complicated picture. The drawings went like a breeze – in fact, I truly enjoyed that stage of the illustration. Here’s one that shows how boggled my attempts were growing –

BARF! Too yellow! Too yellow! I then added some green to get a sense of how that would work against the color of the dogs. The result? BARF SQUARED!
I sometimes find myself trying to convince myself that a picture is coming out okay, even when there’s something telling me it’s not. The recourse in these situations is to sabotage the painting, putting an instant end to the internal debate. This usually involves either scrawling something like “I hate this!” across the picture, or tearing it up, as needed to be done here –

Ripped and then tossed into the air behind me.
Then, after nights of actually losing sleep over this, I was lying in bed – it was about 4AM – and had an epiphany. I not only saw the color in my head, but knew how to make it. I pictured mixing white watercolor with a semi-pale blue. The blue and the orangish color of the dogs were more or less complimentary colors on the color wheel scale. When you put complimentary colors next to each other, they “pop”.
Three hours later I was at the drawing table mixing and applying those combinations. The color matched what I had imagined and I think I finally got what I was going after.
That battle has ended. The wiener dogs have a pale blue chair on which to cavort.
Here, by the way, is the second sample I worked up, showing all ten of them.
One would think that there could be few joys in life greater than painting frolicking wiener dogs. Should this book sell, I think that I’d finally be able to experience that joy.
Unless the art director hates the blue chair….
Now I know where I get it from.
I hate hitting roadblocks like this. The more you work on it the more frustrating it gets (this is actually the one of the subjects of the next podcast I’m doing)
Since I started working digitally this isn’t as much of a problem. I can select the background and do different color adjustments until I find something I’m happy with. You might want to try doing a quick color mockup on photoshop!
The final looks great though!
lookit: http://www.vimeo.com/3441274
Wow, Jeff – That was very helpful! And I really appreciate the time you took to show the process. I’m looking forward to trying that out – and I’ve no doubt the opportunity will soon arise!
I will admit that throughout my own process I said a number of times, “That’s it! I’m going digital!”
I’m not ready to throw away the watercolors, though, but I’d be a foolish Luddite to forgo some of the advantages Photoshop offers. (Hey, I did use it to scan and belch out all the black and whites I painted).
I wonder if the rapidly circling cursor while making a decision is a universal thing, or genetic?
I thoroughly enjoyed this article – hey, i am into painting myself, only on the relaxing side of it.
I like this book already..can’t wait to see the finished it when its published.
One of my favorite new read alouds is your book Katie Loves the Kittens. The story line is excellent and is perfectly punctuated by illustrations that capture Katie’s uncontrollable excitement (her wagging tail is my favorite). The kids love to hear it, I love to read it (my own dog has self control issues), and it is a great lesson about the importance – and difficulty-of having self control.
I read this book to first grade last week. We identified the problem-Katie wants the kittens to like her, but her behavior scares them and gets her in trouble with Sara Ann. We identified how Katie solved her problem-she had to be calm and quiet even though she was so excited. And we applied it to our own lives. But since the first graders were wiggling the entire time, I wasn’t sure how much of an impact the lesson had.
Until today.
I was having my daily morning meeting with one of our “special” first grade friends. I meet with him every day to pump him up and remind him to behave. We were talking about how a kid in his class really bothers him and it makes him want to act out. I told him that no matter what this other boy did, he needed to hold his anger and frustration inside and just act calm and ignore him.
And he says, “Just like that story you read about the dog who wanted to play with the kittens?”
And after I pulled myself off the floor, I said, “Yes! It is exactly like Katie Loves the Kittens. You have to have self control!”
I love my job. And I love your book!
Wow! Way to make my day!
Thanks for sharing that with me –
John