by Ben and Andrea Timmins
So here it is, the second book in our series of children's and young adult illustrated fiction books.
The illustrations were completed over four months ago. Andrea then brilliantly colored and formatted the images and text in Photoshop and InDesign. Overall it has been a fantastic journey. It started out as a rough poem written by Andrea which I reworked and tried to turn into alliterative verse with consistent rhyme.
The technique for illustrating the images was to first do a rough sketch of the characters and scenes. I actually cut out the words for each scene and stuck them into the sketch book so I always knew which exact part of the poem I was illustrating. After I was happy with the sketch, I traced it or recopied it onto tracing paper. I then placed the traced image onto graphite paper and re-impressed (or drew over the traced image) so that image was transposed through the graphite paper onto high quality cartridge paper. I made sure to do this on glossy paper as this is best for ink drawing. For the ink work I used an old fashioned ink quill with nibs in various sizes. This was done in May and June 2012 in Ottawa. I was still teaching English through a branch of the Ottawa Carleton District School Board during the final completion of the drawings.
I know there is still much to learn about the art of being an author and illustrator.
I enjoy a whimsical style of art and illustration similar to Quentin Blake (the chief illustrator of Roald Dahl books) and this lends itself to pen and ink drawing. Of course Photoshop is a fantastic tool to correct, retouch, enhance, format and color images quickly and efficiently but the act of creating for me is still a pencil on paper task. Digital inking software is catching up especially on the latest ipad and it certainly isn't as messy. But I'm not buying in yet. I'll stick to dipping in my quill and nib and making a real splash for the time being.
GET IT HERE FROM AMAZON
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