Dashing Through The Snow Illustration Process
I love showing process.
As a reader you get to see the final work. That’s the most important piece of course, but if you’re an artist or illustrator, or just like peeking behind the creative curtain an seeing what happened up to that final piece, I’m with you. I’ve always loved seeing the stuff that happened before. And if possible, I love getting into the mind of the creator through their letters or notes.
But here I just want to show you a small bit of what went into Dashing Through the Snow.
The first image is the final painting from one of the last pages of the book. The only thing missing is the text. I don’t put that in. The art director at Scholastic does that. I’m happy she does, since my printing isn’t that great. I prefer writing script.
The last present is always the biggest surprise
The painting is of the opening of the very last present that fell from Santa’s Sleigh. I needed to get all the characters in, and yet add a bit of fun to the suspense.
Below is the drawing on the watercolour sheet. There were many rougher drawings before this one.
I admit it’s a bit messy. That gets cleaned up when I ink it.
Once it is inked I start to paint. The picture below is of 4 paintings being done at the same time. I do that so that I make sure my colours don’t change from picture to picture. That’s a very easy thing since I can start getting very creative with new possibilities and add new colours. So that they have some reference I have a practice picture leaning up on my table. I try to make all my mistakes in the practice pictures, but mistakes do happen. And then it’s back to a new stretched sheet of paper and start all over again.
A book can have 18 spreads like this so making sure you got your mistakes out of the way can save a lot of time.
I hope to offer reproductions of this and other images soon. Originals are available.
You can get hard and soft cover and board book from your favorite independent book store or Chapters Indigo.
Happy Singing this Christmas!
