Thursday, June 3, 2010

Story Board - Faerie Tale

I'm now starting work on the Faerie Tale book that is going to be keeping me busy for the next 6 to 8 months. The first step in illustrating a book is to do a story board. This essentially means illustrating the whole story in thumbnail form. These drawings are 3 x 4 inches. This gives you a feel for the entire story and allows you to make critical decisions about the story telling while the art is still small and changes are easy to make. Above I have posted a few composition ideas and a couple of variations. There will be 21 or more paintings for this story as well as a few spot illustrations and they all need to be figured out, refined and then drawn out full scale and painted.  I will be charting my process through this journey here on the blog. This is the first step.

A month or 2 back I posted some witch and brownie designs that I did while the story was still coming together. I was inspired and wanted to jump in and get drawing. The witches and brownies have since been edited out of the tale but they were fun to draw and their sacrifice has strengthened the story. There's so much more to do - lots more drawing required  :)

10 comments:

E.J. Stevens said...

Thanks for sharing this part of the process. I'm really excited for this book! :)

xx,
E.J

From the Shadows

Anonymous said...

Very informative, thanks for posting it. Should keep you occupied for a while!

Ben Hatke said...

What a cool, cool project. You're already working with some fine compositions here!

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Larry MacDougall said...

Thanks E.J.
I figured I would share the entire process of illustrating this book. After all, this blog is essentially about process.

Larry MacDougall said...

Autumn Alchemy - You're welcome of course and thanks.

Larry MacDougall said...

Thanks Ben. Yes, a very cool project with a very cool publisher. I can't wait to really get into it.

Craig Phillips said...

Yes these are great to see and please please post more process during the course of this book project! What a great one to work on!

Can I ask how many images this will be? roughly?

Larry MacDougall said...

Craig - I think we are looking at 21 or 22 full page paintings. One of those will be a double page spread and then there will also be a few spot illos.