@Nyrryl-Cadiz unfortunately there is little room for negociation regarding to the schedule. This current book is going to printer some time in January I think, and it will be out in the market in March 2020.

Thank you for the input. My first instinct was also to limit research time, and cut back a bit thumbnailing time. What I did so far is I look for a decent idea for each rhyme (using mostly keywords, and doodles), and once I found a decent idea, I will still do a couple of thumbnails to get a better composition, but I stopped to explore ideas in complete different directions. But then @Lee-White 's voice is in the back of my mind - "you need to do enough research/messing around" , and also @davidhohn 's voice saying "do not go for the top card solutions, because that is most of illustrators do."

I am still in the process of thumbnailing and rough sketching for the entire book. I just want to check with the community if anyone has other tips for such situation.

I am seeking out advices on what is smart to do when you have a very tight deadline to illustrate a children's book.
My current project is a 40 pages (total 14 spreads + title page + end papers) children's book - a collection of nursery rhymes, and due in mid Jan.

For the cover, I more or less followed @Lee-White's process, did about 50 thumbnails, and 3 rough sketches, and a couple color studies and then went to paint the final image (the process made the editor super happy). But I realized it is not possible for me to treat all images in this book the same way, as I have not enough time to do the work.

So if I were to cut corners in the process to speed up, what is the smart to do, and what should I try to avoid? Which part of the process should I prioritize to ensure better quality for the final art?

Any advice?

I always loved phisical books.
Recent years, I started reading some e-books, mostly non-fictions, and novels. I also tried listening audio books when I am painting, or doing house chores.
I found e-books and audio books have a place my everyday life some how. But they do not replace my need to hold a real physical book, and I have a hard time thinking these formats will work with picture books.

I thought I will do a short summary on my experience from the last 3 days:

I wrote down a good idea on Day8. I might work on that one later. I like where the story is going and what it was about.

The one from day 9 was odd. It does not belong in children's book world, I think. But I thought it was fun to share it here, especially for parents who are experencing a lot of "No"s from their toddlers:
Day 9: My computer just said 'NO'...
There was a dialog window on my screen. But unlike the normal dialog window. There was no “Ok” “Cancel” buttons on them, but only “No”.
I knew exactly what was happening. My toddler daughter Emma has infected my computer with her “No” virus.
First it was her stuffed animal Mousy, then it was our old piano, now my computer????

Day 10, was a non-sense blurb. But I am glad I wrote down something.

Happy writing everyone

@Elena-Marengoni great! Let's keep in touch and meet up at Bologna this year. I am a first-time children's book fair goer, good to know there will be another svs fellow artist there.

I plan to go to Bologna children's book fair in 2020. Anyone is going? I am going to travel there alone. Would really like to meet up with other SVS members if anyone is going there.
I am going to bring my portfolio, postcards, and 1 or 2 picture dummy books with me. I have no expectations. My main goal is to get inspired, get input for my portfolio from people working in inductry, and possibly networking with other artists.

If anyone have experiences, tips, and advices for attending these type of fairs, I would love to hear from you.

@Braden-Hallett thank you for taking the time to put together the promts. I should definitely do this more often, both for writing and painting. I never knew this could be an interesting way to unlock the creativity.

@Braden-Hallett I have to say using promts for writing/(or illustrating) is something I have never done before. In this excise, it was very unexpected for me that I wrote stuff which I would have never come up with by myself. Do people have similar experience when writing with prompts? Do you have this feeling when following the offical promts for inktober when making drawings? Maybe I should do the offical inktober prompts next year.

@Braden-Hallett the promts are really nice. I have been sick for the last couple days. Getting back now. Hope I can continue writting. I will not do catch up game, just picking up today's promt, and start working from here :-).

@Meta thank you for sharing your process, very interesting. I used a similar approach as you did, but the whole process took me about a week (I had to take breaks in between). I did not think the image collections I gathered were perfect that I could not get rid of any. It is more like many images has something speaking to me, but also have things that I am not very interested in. It was hard for me to compare them, such as: I really like the theme of this image, but I am not into a very bright color scheme. Or I love the composition of that image, but I am not into the horror theme. So the whole process for me was about studying my art heros, but also about a conversation with myself to figure out what is really important for me.