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The paper looks extremely blank to me when I begin an illustration for a book. It’s hard to believe that somewhere in all that whiteness there are characters, castles, maybe mountains in the distance, maybe slugs up close. And it seems amazing that they’ll all come to life just by using sticks with color in them (pencil crayons), sticks with hairs on the end (paintbrushes), little pots of paint, bottles of ink, and of course the most important illustration tool, for me, after the pencil: the eraser. Some illustrators have the pictures in their heads before they begin, some illustrator are slower, some faster. Myself, I’m slower, and my head is as blank as the paper at the start. All illustrations for a book start with the roughs. Sometimes three of them. Sometimes thirteen. Which ogre will go where? What will they do with their hands? What expressions should be on their faces? There’s a lot of thinking, deciding and planning before a final drawing begins. Illustrators also have to decide what their characters will wear, whether those characters are children, ogres, bunnies, or even talking carrots. I found this sketch (left) that I’d made while I was getting ready to illustrate Ogre Fun. One way to get the rough scratchy look of ogre clothes is cross-hatching. |