I'm really happy and excited to announce that My Snow Globe: A Sparkly Peek-Through Story is now available! I am very pleased with how they came out! Scholastic did a great job producing this adorable die-cut board book, which features thick pages for little hands and lots of peek through windows with sparkly snowflakes. The story, written by Megan E. Bryant, follows a red cardinal daddy on his flight through the snowy woods to his cozy home where his family awaits.
I thought I would share with you a little bit about my process for creating the illustrations for this sweet book. This project, though deceptively simple (there are only five spreads plus the cover), was actually quite a challenge to illustrate!
When I first began this job, I was given a page of text (the manuscript) as well as a cardboard sample of the book and where the holes would be positioned. Then I was left to my own devices.... :)
I had to be sure to design the illustrations so that they made sense with the story, of course. But I also had to make sure they worked visually both independently as well as in conjunction with exposed parts of the other spreads. For example, as you can see above, when you look at the cover, you can see portions of all the following spreads through the round window. As you turn each page you see a different composition of shapes of the remaining spreads. Also, when you turn the page, the illustration has to work on both sides of it -- so the left side pages of the book become the mirror cut out shapes of the preceding right side pages!
As always, I began with many sketches. In this case, I drew a lot of cute, furry forest creatures.
Then I did many rough thumbnail sketches of the animals in their environment in the shape of each spread. Here is a rough thumbnail of the opening pages:
After I figured out the placement of everything and got my thumbnails approved, I did final sketches.
I was hired to illustrate this book based on my Advent calendar series that I did as a personal project last year and posted every day on Instagram. So I knew I wanted the images to have a similar feel. The color palette would be colorful and festive and fanciful.
For the final illustrations, I used a combination of hand drawn elements which I scanned in and assembled digitally, and those which I created digitally from scratch.
For the snowflakes, I scanned in part of them and put them together in Illustrator using the rotate tool, which I find really helpful.
Then, finally, I did the final paintings for each spread and turned them into my publisher.
Here are some of the published book spreads! I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and I love the glittery snowflakes (hard to see in the photos, but in person, they are great!) This book is a great holiday book choice and is available in stores and online! :)
This was such a fun project to be part of, and I'm lucky to have had the opportunity to illustrate it. Thanks, Megan, for your wonderful words. And thanks to my editor, Celia Lee, Art Director, Patti Ann Harris, and Designer Jessica Tice-Gilbert at Scholastic! The best thing is that we have already finished the sequel to this book which will come out Spring 2018 having an Easter Egg theme! Yep, you guessed it, it will be shaped like an egg!
Here's an itty bitty sneak peak: