Lavender Blue - Layout 1

A couple of final layouts for the Lavender Blue Faerie Tale I'm working on. These will be traced straight on to the watercolour paper that I will be doing the final illustration on. The layouts were done in coloured pencil so that I could quickly jot done the colour ideas I was getting while drawing and also because the soft prisma colour pencils glide so pleasingly over the slightly toothy sketch book paper. The only problem with these  pencils is that you can't really erase them. I tend to use them like watercolour - starting with the light tones and putting the darks down last. I don't usually put a lot of detail into these layouts because I like to save as much creative energy as possible for the painting. The problem now is having to wait the weeks or months it will take before I can finally paint them and spend that pent up energy.

The first picture comes about half way through the story where Lavender encounters what she thinks is a unicorn but which in fact turns out to be a dangerous, shape shifting pookah, fully intent on harming her. The second picture is actually the first illustration in the story where we see Lavender cutting roses in her garden, blissfully unaware of the dangerous adventure into the faerie realm she is about to take.