My newest book:
Stages of a Book: "Mr Cookie Baker"
Working on a book: With this series of entries I want to show you some of the stages of how I work on a book, from first idea to finished illustration. Mr Cookie Baker was published in 1992 and has been out of print for a few years, but now this fall 2006 it is being reissued - Hurrah!
First Idea for the Book: Here are some of my cookies! I love baking cookies and I thought it would be fun to do a book about something I love to do. I worked for a short time in a bakery and that experience also gave me ideas. My recipe is included in the book and on my website: www.monicawellington.com/activities/cookies_recipe.html
First sketches: When I start a book I collect reference materials to help me with my pictures. First I make small sketches and put them together in a mini dummy.
Sketch to color illustration: I want to show you how that sketch turned out in the book (months later!)
The Dummy: I draw bigger sketches for all the pictures and put them together into a "dummy" - a sort of handmade book. It is just in black and white, and I'm trying to plan out how I'm going to organize and design all the pages. I always show my editor my sketches at this stage.
Color Sketches. Next I work on these. I like using color pencils.
And Sketch to Final Picture: this is how that picture turned out when I painted it. For this book I used gouache paint, and color pencils for some details.
Here is another first sketch from my mini-dummy, and next to it, the picture that I found in a magazine that I used for reference. I love how the baker was working so carefully doing her decorating - it looks like she loves what she is doing - and I wanted to capture that in my picture. That is how I feel when I'm decorating my cookies, and when I'm painting!
This is one version of that sketch in color.
Final picture: I kept changing things, trying to make it better. This is how it turned out in my final version for the book.
And this is the last picture in the book, with the reference photo I found in a magazine next to it. To get from one to the other there were lots of black & white sketches and color sketches and practice paintings inbetween. Hard work but I love it!