Silly McGilly: My Illustration Process

Hi all,

I thought I'd share a bit of my process in creating the illustrations for Silly McGilly.

Here is a spread where Silly celebrates St. Patrick's Day at a Leprechaun Hooley. As you can see, it takes a lot of passes to create a finished illustration. Let's start at the beginning!

First, I received the manuscript from the authors, which was basically the text of the story with suggested page breaks.

I printed out the manuscript and read it several times. The whimsical text of this story gave me a lot of inspiration, so as I read, I began doodling possible image and composition ideas for each page. Once I had at least a few ideas for each spread, I started storyboarding the book with rough sketches:

As you can see, the sketches were mostly undefined. I was mainly trying to figure out how the text and images would interact with each other. Once these sketches were approved by the publisher, I moved onto a more detailed pencil work of the Hooley scene:

The final pencil lines became a pretty accurate blueprint for the next stages of illustration work. In Photoshop, I added red lines to accommodate for cropping, bleeds, and the page gutter. When I liked where everything was placed, I moved onto hand-inking the lines.

Finally, I scanned in the inked lines and added color in Photoshop, with a pastel-like brush:

Then voila: a rousing, musical, and fun-filled Leprechaun Hooley scene!

I hope this brought some insight into how Silly McGilly was created :). St. Patrick's Day is coming soon, so click on the link to get a Silly McGilly of your very own! Remember, if you message me with your order of a book, I will send you a free Silly sketch as a thank you gift.

Silly McGilly

Hi all! I apologize for the long absence, but I promise it was for a good reason :) I was illustrating a new picture book called Silly McGilly. It's a book that introduces a leprechaun who comes to play tricks at home and in the classroom on St. Patrick's Day. Here are a few images from the book:

The book is now available for purchase here. Each purchase comes with a Silly doll that you can use to play tricks on your students or little ones! But wait . . there's more! If you message me with a copy of your order, I will also mail you a personalized sketch. 

Lastly, the website has fun coloring pages and will soon feature Silly-themed activities (including directions) that you can use at home or in your classroom. Here's a sneak peek at a Silly Scrapbook page that will be available for download soon:

The publishers were a joy to work with and I really had fun contributing towards the creation of an actual doll (a first for me). 

I hope to continue my Picture Book Process series soon when things settle down a bit. Until then, I'll see if I can post a few process pics from my Silly McGilly work.

Thanks for visiting!