I am excited to announce that my newest book HOPE IS A HOP, written by Katrina Moore, will be published by Dial Books March 7, 2023!
It is now available for Pre-Order!
HOPE IS A HOP is a beautiful, tender story about Eva, a young girl who’s excited about welcoming her baby brother into her family. She plants seeds of hope for her family’s future in the form of her very own garden. When it is upended by a rascally rabbit, she is filled with despair. But when she follows her feelings, she discovers a surprise! It gives rise to a new hope for her growing family. New seeds are planted, new friends are made, and a new garden flourishes as a new member is welcomed into Eva’s family.
This book features many bunnies, which I loved painting. It is a perfect springy book for that special child in your life.
I immediately was taken by this charming story when I was first given the manuscript. Later I learned that it is based on a real-life experience by the author, Katrina Moore, when she and her family discovered a nest of baby bunnies on their property. I mean who could resist painting a bunch of sweet bunnies?!
I loved working with my editor, Ellen Cormier, and art director, Cerise Steel, of Dial Books. It was my first time working with Dial, and I couldn't have asked for a more pleasant experience! I was given complete freedom to create the characters and the cozy world they live in. Revision requests were easy and were always thoughtful and completely warranted. It's such a pleasure to work a project that goes so smoothly.
In this post I want to share a bit about the cover design. People are often surprised to hear that the cover is sometimes the first thing that needs to be finished in the book designing process. It wasn't always like this. Back in the day, I used to leave the cover for last. It is intimidating in that it is the first thing a consumer or reader sees. They are, quite frankly, required to "judge a book by its cover" so to speak. Also, the marketing department of the publisher reviews the finished cover when they are planning how to place the book in the market the following year. So there is some pressure associated with designing a cover to be sure!
For the illustrations for HOPE IS A HOP, I really wanted to incorporate my watercolor flower style that I have been developing over recent years.
I also loved my method of illustrating DUMPLINGS FOR LILI so I decided to combine the two. It involved painting large sections of florals and background and foreground elements separately.
But before I executed the final, I did a lot of exploratory paintings of gardens and flowers. I am ever grateful to the Willowtown Association who gave me a key to their community garden even though I do not have a plot there myself! I was allowed to enter whenever I wanted, enjoy the beautiful, peaceful space, and take reference photos, sketch and paint to my heart's content.
I visited the garden from April 2021 - January 2022. It was great to see it change through the seasons. The bulk of my painting was done in the summer months of 2021.
In May 2021, I was able to visit my mom in California. She is a consummate gardener. I wish I had inherited her green thumb, but sadly I did not. I took photos of her many plants and flowers.
I also did research online and created a massive Pinterest board for this project. Most of the photos are of flowers and gardens, but there are a fair number of sheds, kitchens, and New Yorker covers for inspiration!
After many sketch and painting studies, I did thumbnail sketches of cover ideas. I then developed these after discussing with my editor and art director. One of the things to keep in mind when designing a book cover is how it will read from far away on a book shelf or as a thumbnail size on a computer screen. The book will be competing with so many other books, so you want to make it stand out as much as possible. I like to work very small at first so I can see the overall composition. These are very rough.
I get my general ideas jotted down. Then I take a photo of them with my iPad and import them and sketch in Procreate! I do all of my thumbnails and final sketches for my books in Procreate now.
I gave my editor and art director three ideas. We all liked the third one the best.
They suggested I add a watering can and other gardening tools and seeds.
Before I painted it, I did some color studies first. Here are two rough ones. Mainly I was trying to figure out what color to use for the background. At first I was thinking of a greenish, golden one, but I realized the contrast would be better with a sky blue one. I was also trying to figure out which hairstyle would work best for Eva.
Then I painted separate parts of the image. I painted the side flowers, background, front flowers, bunny and Eva all individually.
Then I scanned everything at 600 dpi and pieced them all together in Photoshop in layers. The cover file is about 150 layers. I paint on my paintings using digital brushes. It's all very much like putting together a collage. This is the method I used to do the illustrations for DUMPLINGS FOR LILI. But for HOPE IS A HOP, I did larger painted pieces.
For the lettering I went old school and tried some styles using pencil and paper. Then I created the letters in Procreate. I do all of my hand lettering in Procreate now. I love how easy it is to adjust brushes.
I then import these into Photoshop where I clean them up. Then I import them into Illustrator to vectorize them so they are scalable and will print crisply.
I hope you enjoy reading this sweet story of Eva and the bunnies in her garden when it comes out in March!