I'm experiencing a humbling learning curve.......drawing. Not drawing numbers as in The Foremost Order of the Gnu Bingo but, rather, drawing as in, well, drawing. In my most recent Book-Number-Three for children, that only grandchildren will love, I've at least moved from the stick figures with a grandchild's photo (face) glued onto the stick neck in Book-Number-One to a prehistoric attempt to draw sharks in this book.
This book idea has been in my brain since last July and I am now just birthing the project. In fact, I had to proclaim a self-deadline of 10:30 tomorrow morning when I have an appointment to deliver the book to my favorite printer/publisher. The story line was easy to write and has been completed since before the Holly Daze. I had hopes of finding a real artist to illustrate my story but God had other ideas and left it for moi to do my own illustrating. What I discovered is that illustrating by hand is a heck of a lot of work......especially when you do not know what the fritz you are doing. I'm positive that a real illustrator could have pumped out the necessary pictures for eighteen pages of story in a short amount of time but with the DYI method of illustrating that I have done, let's just say that a second career for Walt Disney Productions is not in the cards.
Unexpectedly (just about everything associated with illustrating this book was unexpected), it took a great amount of time just deciding on what colors to use. I knew that each character needed to have a consistent appearance and I knew that certain colors do not reproduce well even on a commercial-quality, digital color printer like my friend has at his business. It has taken several trips to art supply and office supply stores to find just the colors that I wanted and even now I am second-guessing some of my choices but since Renoir was not here to advise me I've had to rely on everything I learned about coloring from my Kindergarten teacher.
My shark characters will never win the Illustrator of the Year Award for me....or anyone else for that matter....but as I've created and colored them I have become fond of my little friends. I'm happy with the story line even though Renoir must be turning in his grave.
Yes, Kindergarten has come in handy. I was able to stay in the lines.
Ancora imparo
