Hi All! I’m very excited to share some progress from a book I am working on for an author who is self-publishing. He contacted me last summer while I was traveling and in the midst of my tarot work, but he was willing to wait for my schedule to open up, and I’m so glad he did! I’ve been having a lot of fun with the project.
Gilly & the Snowcats, by R.S. Bovard, is a fantastical middle grade novel about a young girl, Gilly, who races the Iditarod in Alaska with a team of cats! It’s full of adventure, magic, and girl-power. I’ll be sure to post more about it when the book’s website is set up. The author wanted a book cover, a map, a chapter header illustration (repeated for all chapters), and seventeen interior full page drawings.
The work is due mid-May and I am about to start on final illustrations. I wanted to show a bit of the process going into them. Below are a selection of ‘thumbnail’ sketches. These are the first things I draw – rough images working out the composition.
The author and I went over the thumbnails and discussed if anything was missing or needed revised. I then hired a local girl to model as Gilly and I photographed her posing for various scenes. This was the first time I’ve hired a model!
I just finished all of the sketches, which I will also go over with the author to make sure everything is correct before moving on to finals. Below is a selection of four interiors, including three which you may recognize from the thumbnails above.
This looks amazing and so fun!