This is an illustration I did for my first childrens book.

This piece was inspired by feeling disconnected from family and friends due to the covid-19 virus and finding new ways to communicate via iPad and digital apps.

A sketch for an illustration I am working on titled "The Crazy DogLady".... ok, it's a selfportrait
Had big challenges pushing the gesture and drawing the dog, this is propobly my 4th or 5th version of it. I googled a lot of references on dogs and dynamic gestures. Next phase, polishing up and coloring.

Here is the finished version.

#sketchbook #procreate #ipad![alt text]

Link to the video on youtube.
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WIP putting down initial color and shading, still not quite finnished.

Here is my input.

A difficult topic. The principals in Dunns book are the same general principals that have been thought in artschools and artbooks or videos for a long long time. Just have a look at Winson Guptile rendering with pen and ink. These are not new principles and Dunn did not invent them. For example rendering with 3 or 5 or 12 values is not a new thing. Neither are value scales or drawing the line around the form (they already knew how to do that in the reneissance period, just ask Glenn Vilppu). They explain all about values and scales on the New Masters Academy beginner series also as do other instructors. These are all the basics of art so it makes me kind of angry when watching the youtube video it sounds like he invented the value scales, well he did not. He arranged the information in his own way and compiled it together and that is copyright protected not the information itself. His book actually looked interesting and like something that I would like to buy but now I am just kind of mad.

Here is my current stage. I think I am going to try to finnish this piece before it finnishes me Getting a bit annoyed with it really, feels like pulling teeth. Still a couple of things to fix like the dogs eyes (the expression is wrong). Going to fix that, then the final render and calling it done.

@jsnzart there's your angle of approach then, politics is nuts.... now start drawing

If you informed google about the site, then it should appear there eventually but it will take time for google to index the page. Give it a couple of weeks.

Been busy making sketches. This book is not a picture book since it has a lot of text and it is aimed at children who can read. This makes it challenging to make sure there is enough room for text in relation to images. That is why I decided to use a lot of vignette illustrations to give more room for text and save the full page or spread illustrations to more interesting and important story moments. I keep track of my progress in photoshop where I have a thumbnail of the entire book and whenever I finnish a sketch I link the psd files to the thumbnail grid. That way I can see the whole design of the book.

Thank you for sharing your process and lovely sketches, very interesting to see. I always begin with research as well and use pinterest to store images for reference use. How do you cope with time pressure and deadlines? When I am illustrating I feel like I am trying to balance time pressure and quality of work, for example how much time to spend exploring different design ideas etc. and when to just push on with the work?

Thank you for the feedback @Jacy13 I decided to go with 1 since it fit the story moment the best. Plus I have another image with a similar composition with 3 and wanted a bit of variety in the book. Here is the finished pencil sketch. I tried to think about grouping shapes and also "big, medium, small" shapes.

These look great! On thing that you could try is to push the proportions a bit more, experiment with crazy proportions and shapes.

My name is Hanna Kenakkala. I live in finland with my husband and our lively lapphund Leevi. I have been illustrating as a side job for a couple of years now. I have illustrated two books for children for a small publisher and right now I am illustrating a third book for the same publisher. This time around I am trying to document my process better and make some blogposts about it. I will also post my proggress here.

Feedback and advice is most welcome, since I feel that there is always something more to learn and the best way to improve is to get feedback from other artists.

I hope you find this interesting and if you would like to follow up on other things then here are a few links for you:
website: https://hakepe.myportfolio.com/

Which thumbnail do you like the best? 3 children on cliffs by the sea. A full spread.

I will be following this progress with great interest. I am also illustrating my third book right now and trying to document the process too since I plan to make blog posts about it. It will be interesting to see your process.

@MichaelaH Thank you, flipping it did not occur to me, I need to try it. Thanks!

This is a cover for a childrensbook. Which version do you like the best and why? Having trouble deciding.

Congratulations! The cover looks great, love the color and light.