The Making of a Cover: The Wrong Side of the Bed

Legendary librarian, teacher, and children’s book advocate John Schu (aka @MrSchuReads in the twittersphere) was kind enough to unveil the front cover of The Wrong Side of the Bed on his blog the other day. Written by Lisa M. Bakos and illustrated by yours truly, the book is scheduled for release by G.P. Putnam’s Sons on March 8, 2016.

It’s been a long time in the making. In fact, next week marks two years since I was first approached about illustrating Lisa’s hilarious text. As anyone in publishing knows, that’s just how things go sometimes. But hip, hip, hooray!—today I turned in the last bit of art for the book, the endpapers.

Anyway, I’m thrilled to have the chance to show off the front cover, and since you’ll have to wait a bit longer for a view of the interiors, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share a bit of the cover-making process.

first thumbnail sketches

The first challenge was fitting all ten characters in the story onto the jacket. As you can see above, I tried a couple of variations, with the main character surrounded by, or next to the rowdy group of animals with whom she contends. But none of these really seemed to convey enough mayhem. (One note: even though the sketch on the lower right didn’t make it as a cover, I used a similar arrangement for the endpapers.)

For the second round of sketches, my fabulous Art Director, Cecilia Yung thought that a bed should be used as a component coming in between the main character and the animals—to literally show her on the wrong side of the bed. I had been worried that such a static element might be too dull, but I tried it anyway. Here’s what I came up with, and I even worked it up into several finished variations. We thought we were there, but...

from the second round of sketches

a color finish

It turned out, this worked much better as a black and white sketch than a full-color illustration. So it was back to the drawing board. Our book designer, Annie Ericsson had the brilliant idea of using the bed as a graphic element, rather than making it too realistic. In this option, she suggested hiding the main character under the blankets, thus accentuating the craziness of the animals, who could be peaking over the top.

I loved the idea, and ran with it. As you can see in the first sketch below, on the left side—which would have been the back of the jacket—I pushed things a little too far with the farting penguins (note the dazed and repulsed hippopotamus). As all good art directors do, Cecilia reined me in just a tiny bit. That’s what you see in the final sketch, and in the finished cover.

jacket sketch, third round

final jacket sketch

The Wrong Side of the Bed hits bookshelves in March, but it’s currently available for pre-order through the Penguin Random House website. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far!

Miss Marple’s Musings and Author Turf Interviews

It’s always nice when people take interest in your work, especially when commitments have you isolated and chained to the drawing board, as I have been over the past few months. Recently, I had the pleasure of participating in a few very fun interviews, by some terrific bloggers. Here are two I forgot to mention on this page.

If you are a fan of #kidlit, no doubt you are aware of Miss Marple’s Musings and Author Turf. Both were a hoot for me, and provide a little insight into my illustration practice—if you are so inclined.

Miss Marple’s Musings
Author Turf

Thanks Joanna and Brittney!

What’s News with Me

By golly, I’ve been a bad blogger. Between looming deadlines and a vacation over the summer, I’ve really neglected this space. Anyway, here’s what’s news with me…

I’m hard at work finishing up illustrations for The Wrong Side of the Bed, by Lisa M. Bakos, to be published by Putnam in 2016. If you’d like to see some teaser details, check out my tumblr or  instagram feed. Then, it’s onto the art for Little Card, by Charise Harper also due out in 2016.

In the meantime, if you find yourself in the Midwest this month, I’m participating in a really cool exhibition at The University of Missouri that opens on October 7th. Assistant Professor John Malta has organized “Process Work: the Process Work and Illustrations of Contemporary Illustrators,” and the roster of artists is amazing—see the list on the fabulous poster John designed below. I’m showing the ugly underbelly for my sloths piece from World Rat Day.

More soon, or who am I kidding? Soonish...

are you sitting down? i'm in the new york times

If so, stand up! At least that’s the message from the article I had the pleasure of illustrating for last week’s Sunday Review section of The New York Times.

Art Director Aviva Michaelov sent me a great piece about the many dangers of sitting all day. Admittedly, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time in my chair lately, working on various projects, so this subject has been very much on my mind (and aching joints). Since the finished pieces turned out nicely, I’d like to take this opportunity to share a bit of my process.

Once I got started with sketches, I kind of couldn’t stop. Sometimes you get assigned something that just illustrates itself, the subject/writing is so good. That was definitely the case for me here.

I’m sure I supplied more sketches than were necessary. Above is my first one, followed by a bunch of the others as ideas evolved.

In then end, what started out as one piece turned into four! Aviva was very gracious, redesigned the page and approached the editor with my ideas, even though (unbeknownst to me) they had  discussed images of standing people.

Then the fun really began. Pictured here may look like a pile of scribbles and splotches—which it is. Behold the ugly underbelly of my process. Through the power of the internet—while waiting for some paint to dry—I watched a video of the great Quentin Blake discussing his process, and picked up a great blotting technique to create the texture in the final skull chair.

Oh!...and in the midst of all this, the Space Shuttle flew by.

Here’s how it looks in print, and a link to the article online. Thanks Aviva ~ that was really fun!