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About the Book

This book is the second installment in my We Are… series: a series of picture books to explore the wonders of the weird, creepy, and overlooked organisms of the living world. From fungi to jellyfish and beyond, spark your curiosity and peer into forgotten, unknown worlds. Told from the perspective of the subject, these books skew nonfiction with facts and glossaries but also add in a touch of mystery and a dab of spookiness.

We Are Jellyfish is told from the perspective of jellyfish, who share factually accurate details about themselves—what they eat, how they hunt, and how they live in the world. However, along for the ride is a young scuba diver who is a self-proclaimed “jellyfish expert” and wishes to tell the story of jellyfish herself. As they travel deeper into the ocean depths, will she finally learn to listen to the mysteries of the deep sea? Weird things begin to happen as the waters get colder, darker, and the jellyfish reveal their powerful techniques of survival.

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The Making of This Book

I shared the entire process of creating this book as I made it here on my Substack. Over 2.5 years, this book went from idea to sketches, manuscripts, storyboards, final art spreads, and completed book with more than 40 process posts along the way.

Thank YOU!

We Are Jellyfish would not be what it is today without the support, feedback, and kindness from YOU, my readers and subscribers. Making a book is a long journey with lots of highs and lows, joy and frustration, but y’all give my art a home, my creativity an outlet, and my spirit a buoy when I need it most—this book would not exist without you!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Whew! Well, I’ll be sharing more about this book in the future, but I wanted to get this post out quickly because if you order the book in the next 2-3 days, it should arrive by Christmas! Perfect for the kids (or jellyfish-lovers!) in your life!

And now I’m off to take a break from my desk and celebrate! First, Stick Boy cookies, then a swim in the pool with Butterbean, and maybe a warm bowl of chili after that.

Thank you for following along with this process and for all your support in creating this book! I can’t believe it’s out and I hope you like it! :)

<3,
Christine

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Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you’re enjoying some good pies, biscuits, family time, and… naps!

Last week and this week I finally finished drawing all the scuba divers for the book—it took me much longer than I thought it would! But, they turned out really well, so at least I’m happy with them. :)

Here are some process shots of how I made them plus the updated storyboard and a list of what all I need to do to finish this book at the end!

First, here are the original sketches that I had been using as placeholders on the final art spreads:

I had taken two of the scuba divers (the dark ones below) to a little bit more final to test out some things, but had not spent much time getting them right. Then at some point I redrew them and changed the colors to the bright, neon green/blue palette (in top-right corner). So now, I needed to experiment more with colors, finalize the linework/style/positions, and find what works best!

I came up with those four color palettes above and liked all of them. So I decided to test them out on some final art spreads—both a white and a dark background. You can see the tests on the dark background below. After I did the tests I realized even though I liked the dark hair, it didn’t work on the dark background. And I also liked the red scuba outfit and thought it would be a good contrast to the mostly blue/green backgrounds in the book, but it ended up looking too different, like it didn’t belong. So it turned out my second instinct of the neon green was the best color palette!

From there, I grabbed all the scuba diver sketches I had used as placeholders in the final art spreads and put them in order of appearance. I ended up switching/changing some of the positions so that there was variety from spread to spread and not too-similar positions right next to each other.

Then I went through and drew all the final linework! This is the part that took way longer than I thought it would. I realized as I was drawing that much of the sketches were a little off—like weird legs or arms, or flippers pointed in odd directions, or proportions being imbalanced. Plus figuring out all the facial expressions and how the head should be turned. There was a lot of fiddling and redrawing, but I think they turned out really well!

Here is a close up of when I started coloring them in Photoshop, with my little color palette guide I made for each eye-dropper-ing.

And… tada! Here are all the final scuba divers!

Here’s one of the final art spreads with the new scuba diver girls so you can see how they work together!

And here’s the updated storyboard with all the new scuba divers! I also have adjusted some colors and details in some of the spreads, especially the first five.

This email is already very long from all the images, but I quickly want to jot out (mainly for myself) a list of the tasks I still need to do to finish this book!

• Draw the speech bubbles and finalize the text in them (shortening!)

• Go through every spread to finalize the artwork and clean things up

• Finalize typography and make sure it is consistent throughout

• Write and design the Glossary page and any other back matter

• Design the book cover (front and back!)

• Write any publishing copy (like book description

• Upload everything to Amazon and send out a Substack post to announce!

Seeing all that together… it’s a lot. But many of those tasks are fairly simple or are already partially done. To have this book available to buy in time for Christmas, I probably have about a week and a half to get everything done and uploaded.

Is it possible? I don’t know! Am I going to try? I guess so!

Worst case, I get the book out in January. It’s been helpful to have a deadline to push me through the end of this book that has been in the works for almost 3 years now!

I’ll try to send out a short update next week, but will be mostly focused on writing, editing, and designing to finish as much as I can! :)

<3,
Christine

Another good week of work—I finished two more final art spreads, including the daunting, detailed one! On my last post, my dear friend Beth commented:

“Your body now knows how these work so can just step aside to let the creativity flow.”

I didn’t realize it before Beth pointed it out, but she’s totally right! When I was making the first 6 spreads it was a constant struggle of trial and error (heavy on the error). But somewhere along the way—I think it was the second time I painted spread 4-5—everything clicked into place and became a whole lot easier. I had discovered the way I wanted the spreads to look and how to do it. So instead of bumbling my way through each piece, I was able to sit down and just let it pour out.

As I painted this week, I listened a lot to The String Cheese Incident which Declan informed me is a “frat boy band”. Are they? I wouldn’t know… I spent my one evening at a frat in college throwing up on the curb because the theme of that night’s party was Heaven and Hell and somehow I ended up in Hell (the basement) and was given a Tabasco shot (I heard they gave out champagne up in Heaven) and well, my little tum-tum didn’t like that too much. Perhaps I should have found the frat that listened to String Cheese Incident instead.

Anywaaaaays, they have a song called Jellyfish, which is not actually about jellyfish, but it does have a good line (“my brain is just a jellyfish in the ocean of my head”) that is exactly how I felt this week painting so much!

Another song by SCI (yeah, I’m enough of a fan that I use the acryonym), that is relevant both to the creative process and also maybe life in general right now, is Joyful Sound. There are tons of great lines in that song, but a favorite is:

Well, every piece to the puzzle snaps tight in the groove
I close my eyes, breathe deeply and let my feet move
You know I feel a little better now for speaking my mind
A good vibes and circulation, see who they find

Could there be a better description of making art? Or the purpose and benefit of creativity? It’s maybe only better with the addition of this lyric:

Just one step at a time in the right direction
I'm gonna aim for the sky, keep my feet on the ground
Raise my voice to the heavens, make a joyful sound

Making art doesn’t always feel like making a joyful sound, of course. Sometimes, at the beginning of a project what comes out is less joyful sound and more dreadful noise. But, in the wise words of String Cheese,—don’t laugh!—we just keep taking one step at a time in the right direction and eventually, the puzzle pieces snap together and a joyful sound is made.

Ok, ok, enough rambling on about creativity… on to the artwork! As I said, I finished two final art spreads this week. Here is the updated storyboard with Spread 18-19 and Spread 24-25:

And below, for paid subscribers, I’ll share those two pieces up close, and share the process behind making them, and I go pretty deep into the process this time! Thank you paid subscribers for funding my work and being the patrons of my joyful sounds (and dreadful noises)! If you’d like to upgrade to support my work and see the process behind my art, tap the button below and join us for just $5! ❤️

Process of Spread 18-19

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I somehow managed to finish two more final art spreads this week and have even started on a third (the big, scary, detailed one)! I’m trying to stay super focused on the art right now, but I’ll quickly share these two completed spreads and abbreviated process with you below!

Spread 14-15

Here is the finished physical artwork, drawn with watercolor pencils and then activated with water:

And here is that same artwork popped into Photoshop and inverted!

And, after some digital pixel-pushing, here is the final artwork spread!

Spread 20-21

And then, here is the finished physical artwork for the second spread. You may notice I ended up tossing out the sketch that was in the storyboard and going back to a version from a long time ago! I started working on that first sketch, but I felt the message from this spread (about reproducing so many tiny jellyfish so quickly) was important to get across (and fits in better with the steadily more creepy/malevolent mood as the book goes on).

Here is that artwork inverted:

And then here is the final spread with digital editing + typography:

And lastly, here is the updated storyboard with those two new spreads!

I think the little push of a looming deadline has helped kick me into gear and made me really focus. I also think I make my best art when I’m in a loose, go-with-it mood, and when you’ve got lots to do, that’s what often ends up happening! Just get out of the way and let the art make itself!

I started today on spread 18-19 (about the jellyfish life cycle) which has long intimidated me because of it’s detail and complexity, but it’s going well so far. I’ll share that piece next week.

Thanks for reading and for your support! :)

<3,
Christine

Surprise! I really did finish painting two spreads in one week! You can see the thumbnail of spread 12-13 below in the updated storyboard.

And here is a close-up of my favorite part:

For paid subscribers, keep reading below to see the final spread up close and personal, plus the full process from sketch to final! Free subscribers can upgrade with the button below for just $5!

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Hi, there! I’m back!

Thanks for your patience as I took a few weeks off to recalibrate and attempt to help after Hurricane Helene tore through our community. I was able to get back to work on We Are Jellyfish last week and now have a new final art spread to share with you!

These bright, squiggly tentacles are inspired by the Portuguese Man o' War, which I know is most often classified as a siphonophore and not a jellyfish, but which I decided long, long ago to include in my book on jellyfish.

As I said way back in the second update on the process of making this book, the word jellyfish is not exactly a scientific term and many, many scientists disagree on what should and shouldn’t be classified as a jellyfish. As new species are discovered and more is learned about the species already found, scientists have had to rethink and reorganize the way they are categorized.

And so, for me to make a book about the elusive jellyfish, I had to decide where I would draw the line on what is and isn’t a jellyfish. And you know what? I’m bein’ inclusive, y’all. My book covers the entire Medusozoa subphylum—which includes the classes of Scyphozoa (true jellyfish), Cubozoa (box jellyfish), Staurozoa (stalked jellyfish), and Hydrozoa (siphonophores)—and I also added in comb jellies, which are in a whole different phylum called Ctenophora!

So, if you’re someone who fervently believes only “true jellyfish” are jellyfish and are gonna be all mad about it when this book comes out… sorry! But siphonophores and comb jellies are just too beautiful and fascinating to leave out. You can read more about my decision on what to include in that second post here:

Anyways… here’s the updated storyboard with this new spread!

It took me a whole week to draw and paint this spread and then another two days to fiddle with the digital editing and find the right balance of colors. It was a lot of back and forth, trial and error, this is wonderful! and this is terrible! You know, the creative process in a nutshell.

If you’re a paid subscriber, read on below to see the whole process of this spread from sketch to painting to final artwork!

The Process of Making Spread 8-9

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Ok, ok, ok, I know it’s been a while since I’ve worked on my in-progress book, We Are Jellyfish. In the months since my last book update, I had summer vacation with Butterbean, I went through (am going through?) IVF, and just took some time off the book.

But now that Butterbean’s back in school and I have less doctor’s appointments, I’m back to working on my book! Woohoo!

Also, I’m aware that in my last book update, I said I was going to completely revamp the art style and medium of this book after two years of work.

Well, let me just say this: that was dumb.

Sometimes, a completely new direction is what you need, but sometimes you just need a break. This book has been hard to make (for many reasons) but the challenge has been enjoyable. I didn’t want it to be the same as my other books—I wanted it to be different—like jellyfish are different.

One of the biggest hurdles has been drawing/painting the transparency of jellyfish. And in that last update where I announced I was now going to use Posca paint pens… I think I was taking a bit of a cop-out. Because I was tired and frustrated.

That Posca spread experiment turned out cool, and I do really like it as a piece of art. But it doesn’t portray the transparency of jellyfish. And that is one of the most important and odd things about them!

But no more! I’ve had an entire summer to recharge and forget about the book, and I’m not ready to give up on the coolest, weirdest, most ethereal aspect of jellyfish—that they’re translucent, see-through, blubbery blubbers!

So anyways, I sat down this week to redo that last spread in my original watercolor pencil/inverted technique I developed for this book. And here’s what I made!

I like it! It still needs some fine-tuning and detail work (for example, I want to digitally paint in some white highlights and make the water ripples/reflections fade more into the background), but it’s a good base to jump off for this spread!

As a refresher—for you and me both!—here’s where I’m at with the storyboard:

I’m aiming to paint one spread a week for the next little while, and then I’ll need to go back through each painted spread to do a lot of detail work, editing, and making sure everything’s consistent. I hope to have the book done in time for the holidays… we’ll see!

The Creative Process Behind Spread 4-5

And now, as a bonus for my paid subscribers, read on to see the full process of making this spread from pencil sketch, to watercolor pencil coloring, to water activation, to painting details, to inverting, to digital design and editing!

Let’s dive in!

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Haha, so what if I decided to totally redo the style of my in-progress We Are Jellyfish book? Wouldn’t that be funny? Wouldn’t that be fun? 😵‍💫

Sometimes, when working a long time on a big art project like a book, it can feel a little like I’m going insane. And I’ve been working on this book for two years now. Am I making the right choices? Am I the only one who sees the vision? What even is the vision? What if the vision changes? Why are jellyfish speaking to me?!

As you know, I’ve been plodding along having revelation after revelation with this book, and you all probably think it’s never going to get done. I think that sometimes too. But this time, I feel I’ve hit on something real. Something that ties together this book’s subject, concept, and mood (things I don’t really choose, but that float into my mind and demand to be made) with my artistic style, my writing voice, and my way of making things (things I choose and develop).

It’s this pairing together that makes art: an ethereal idea made real by human hands. But tying those two things together can be impossibly hard!

So anyways, I feel I am closer! Below you can see the process of making the spread that maybe is the new style of this book? This spread feels way more like me and was much more enjoyable to make.

Sometimes art requires struggling and pushing through, but I’ve learned that if you’ve pushed and pushed and pushed and still aren’t getting where you want to be… maybe you’re pushing on the wrong door? Maybe that door is meant for someone else, and if you could just stop struggling so much and turn around, you’d see you have your own door made especially for you, and that you already have the key in your pocket, and dang, if only you had known, you could have just started here and avoided all that strife, but maybe the door doesn’t appear until you’ve proven you’re willing to put in the work, and maybe you didn’t have the key until you showed that you could listen and try and that goshdarnit you are not going to give up, even if this door never opens!

Maybe that’s when the right door appears.

Ha, I don’t know, here’s the process of this spread!

1. First, I grabbed the initial sketch from the storyboard

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It’s Here, It’s Here—The Book is Here!

I’ve been hard at work for months on my newest book, Might Could Make a Book, and it’s finally live today!

This book takes the content from two of my most popular online classes (together taken by over 14,000 students on Skillshare), updates and expands it, and restructures it all as a book! Over 27 chapters, this book takes you through the entire process of writing, illustrating, and publishing a children's picture book—including how to submit to traditional publishers or self-publish your own indie book! And it’s available as a printed book or ebook!

Learn more about the book

Buy the book!

What’s In the Book?

Picture books are an unusual art form, combining a unique blend of writing, illustrating, and designing. This book demystifies the picture book making process so you might could make your own!

Through 27 chapters with templates and exercises, I’ll guide you through the process of molding your jumbled-up story idea into the 32-page picture book structure. Using my book, We Are Fungi, as an example, I’ll show you how to do it all:

• writing your story idea,

• refining your manuscript,

• designing your characters,

• drawing your storyboards,

• crafting a book dummy,

• and creating the final art.

But the bookmaking process doesn’t stop there! I’ll also show you how to finish your book whether you want to focus on:

• Traditional Publishing: submitting your book dummy to publishers, or

• Self-Publishing: designing, distributing, and promoting your indie book!

Plus there’s a bonus Resources section at the back of the book that includes more process, more examples, a Further Reading list, and Templates for you to use while making your own book!

Buy the book!

Why Did I Make This Book?

I wanted to remake my two online classes as a book because I made those classes almost 10 years ago, and a lot has changed since then! Not only is the audio and video quality of those two classes poor compared to today’s standards, but I’ve also learned an enormous amount since I made those classes—I’ve published 7 books, 4 of those traditionally published with Scholastic! This book has been expanded and updated with everything I’ve learned along the way.

Also, many of the books I read myself when learning to make picture books have since gone out of print or are now outdated with the newly widespread access to design tools and print-on-demand. I also could not find a book that covered all 3 aspects of bookmaking: writing, illustrating and publishing.

All this to say: the content in Might Could Make a Book has been seriously upgraded from the class version, so this book is even better than the classes! Even so, reviews of the classes are glowing. Here are a few reviews from the online class version of this content.

“Likely the best class I have taken on skillshare. I was floored by the amount of information I received in this class. It was an entire college writing class in a nutshell and so user friendly with lots of examples and ideas. A phenomenal instructor! Looking for other classes that she teaches for sure! Thank you!”
–Cathie P., Picture Books I: Write Your Story student

“I’ve taken a few classes here for writing children’s books and this one by far is the best. it’s broken down and has A LOT of information. Perfect if you are like me and have never written anything before. There is amazing information on the structure of a good book. My favorite part was with everything she taught, she gave an example of a book that uses it.”
–Natasha J., Picture Books I: Write Your Story student

“I took a number of children’s books classes here on skillshare and out of all of these, Christine’s lessons are the most comprehensive, informative, and organized! I gleaned knowledge here that I didn’t from the other classes. Thanks for all your efforts in putting all this together :)”
–Annie Q., Picture Books I: Write Your Story student

So just imagine how much better the book is!

Buy the book!

What? You’re Still Not Sure?

Well dear reader, I am so proud of this book and so confident that it is the resource you need and so excited for you to start making your picture book, that I’m even sharing the book’s Resources webpage right now with you!

At the back of Might Could Make a Book, I point readers to this Resources webpage on my website that includes an extensive list of every book, link, template, and digital download mentioned in the book. It also includes extra process shots and an abridged list of Further Reading suggestions.

Y’all—that’s just the EXTRAS!

You Might Could Make a Book!

So c’mon, what more do you need to know? If you want to make a picture book, this book is for you. I’ve poured everything I have and everything I know into it and I can’t wait for you to get it and start making your own picture book. I’ve been sharing the progress of making my next book here on this Substack and I want nothing more than for you to be working on your own book alongside me. It’s better together! Making a book is hard work, but the joy of holding your book in your hands or hearing a child tell you how much they love reading it is incomparable!

I know you have a picture book idea—practically everyone does! Let’s finally do something with that idea and transform it into a real, live book!

Buy the book!

Thanks a bunch, y’all! I can’t wait to hear what you think of the book! And if you do get it, please leave a review once you’ve read it! :)

<3,
Christine

I’ve been hard at work the past couple of months working on a special new project and it is almost ready to share with you! As I finish up, I thought I’d share a little snippet from this project to let you in on what I’ve been doing.

Below, you’ll find the Introduction to my newest book (coming in March/April!): Might Could Make a Book: How to Write, Illustrate, and Publish Your Children’s Picture Book!

This book is similar to my last, Sketchbook to Style: Discover your Artistic Style in Your Sketchbook, but is less workbook-y and more book-book-y. In this book, I lay out everything I know about my children’s books and all the information, tips, techniques, and knowledge you need to know to make your own! While there are no specific assignments, I do suggest exercises and processes to try as you work on creating your own picture book.

Here’s a peek at the Table of Contents to show you everything that’s covered in the book. These page numbers are not accurate though—the book is sitting at 150 pages right now, and I’m not done yet!

I’m very excited and proud of this book and can’t wait to share it with you soon! In the meantime, here’s a peek at the Introduction! (P.S. And a lil’ something extra for paid subscribers at the end!)

Introduction

Hi! I’m Christine Nishiyama, illustrator and writer at Might Could Studios. I make books, write essays, and draw in my sketchbook. I’ve kept a sketchbook drawing practice for 20+ years and have been a full-time, professional artist for 10+ years.

Over the past decade, I’ve taught more than 100,000 aspiring and established artists, helping them learn new skills, grow their confidence, and make more art. Many of my online classes focus on specific art techniques and processes, like composition and gesture drawing. But my true passion is creating illustrated books. Making books combines all of my loves: drawing, writing, and designing. My two classes on picture book writing and illustrating have been taken by over 14,000 students. But a lot has happened since I created those two classes in 2014!

In 2017, I self-published my first book We Are Fungi, a children’s picture book about the kingdom of fungi. In 2019 I signed a book deal with Scholastic and in 2020, Happy Paws (Layla and the Bots #1) written by Vicky Fang, was published. The second, third, and fourth books in that series followed in 2020-2022. I am currently working on the final art for my next children’s book, We Are Jellyfish.

And so, with all that new experience and knowledge I learned on the job and in the real world, I decided to revisit the content from my picture book classes. The book you’re reading now combines all the information from those classes, updated with professional expertise. Here, I outline my authentic book-making process for you to follow as you create your own picture book. 

Using my We Are Fungi book as an example, I show you every step from idea to manuscript to storyboard to final art to publishing (both submitting to traditional publishers and self-publishing). 

It took me years to create We Are Fungi. I had to scrape together all the skills and knowledge I could from books, classes, videos, and expensive professional events. And much of that content was far out of date, created before print-on-demand, email marketing, and even Photoshop existed. The rest of it, I had to figure out myself.

So, in this book, I’m sharing everything I know about making picture books: writing, illustrating, traditional publishing, self-publishing, printing, and marketing. It’s all here in one place, so you don’t have to waste your precious creative time searching when you could be writing and drawing. 

Making a book is a big project and requires time, discipline, and dedication. It can be both a joy and a slog. And that is where I find the Might Could mindset becomes helpful. The phrase “might could” is Southern slang which means you may be able to do something in the future. As in, if I were to ask you: “Are you going to make your own picture book?” You would respond: “I don’t know, but I might could!”

Call it redundant and bad grammar if you like. But to me, it represents a realistically optimistic point of view. Making a picture book is hard work, and who knows what will happen, but gosh darn it, let’s give it a go.

You never know what might could happen!

Woohoo! I hope the Introduction gets you excited for the book! I’m finishing final edits and creating the book cover right now and then will be ready to release it into the wild!

I’d love to hear what you think or what you would be most excited to learn about in this book in the comments below (if you’re a paid subscriber) or you can reply to this email if not! Are you working on a picture book right now too? Or dreaming of a book idea? Let me know!

Keep Reading!

And lastly, for my lovely, amazing paid subscribers, you can keep reading below and read the whole first chapter of the book!

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I’m not oblivious to the way I use the word “final”, you know. Ever since I shared the Final storyboard (which is not final), I’ve been sharing “Final Art Spreads” (which are also not final). I like saying final because it makes me feel like I’m making progress and, however meanderingly, moving in the right direction. Often, the road to finishing a book is not just long and twisty but also wanders in every direction. Sometimes I feel like I’m pushing things forward and sometimes I feel like I’m falling backwards. Making mistakes, trying things that don’t end up working, or just making something that looks… bad. It happens! Often!

In times like those, the reminder that I’m working on the final art, helps. So why not? I’ll take all the help I can get.

Anyways, onto today’s FINAL art! Here’s the process I went through this week creating the final art for spread 6-7. (Nope, I won’t stop calling it final—I AM making progress on this book, even if it takes me 3 years to finish it!)

Ok, now that that’s off my chest! First, I took the sketch for spread 6-7 from my storyboard and blew it up to full size (17.5 in x 9 in at 300dpi).

Then I thought about how I wanted to incorporate the wet-watercolor-on-white background idea that I stumbled on last week. Above, I played with the composition and typography until I had all the pieces fitting together well. I’m pretty happy with how I was able to mimic the undulating feel of jellyfish in the background and typography.

I also updated the science note into the final color/typography and added a little jellyfish tentacle reaching out to the scuba diver girl, because it creepily alludes to what’s gonna happen later in the book!

Next, I drew the overall shape of the jellyfish sketch onto a piece of watercolor paper.

Then I colored it in with my Staedtler Watercolor Pencils using the opposite colors of what I wanted it to be (pink becomes green, blue becomes orange, etc.)

Then I activated the colors by painting it with water!

Next I drew in some details and extra color. I drew some details in brown on the little Irukandji jellyfish and painted some black onto the bell of the Lion’s Mane jellyfish. Usually it’s a kinda bad idea to paint or color with black because it has no depth and can be quite flat. But in this case, it’s opposite-town and black will turn to white! So I gave it a try. Lastly, I drew in some black (ie. white) outlines to the jellyfish bell and some light, stringy tentacles (I plan on doing some tentacle work digitally as well).

And now for the exciting part, like in Frankenstein, when you pour in the chemicals or flip that giant electricical switch and finally get to see what kind of odd (grotesque? beautiful?) creation your experimenting has created!

It’s aliiiiiive! Well, it’s not perfect, and it is odd, but that’s why I’m using this whole process. Jellyfish are weird and odd and creepy and beautiful, and I needed a way to create them in that way! Just beautiful doesn’t work. Also, I find just beautiful work boring. Also, I’m not sure I have ever or could make something that could be called beautiful. That’s not really my jam.

What I’m good at—and what I enjoy making—is more creepy-cute. Which is of course, why I’m drawn to fungi and jellyfish and things of that nature. I’m particularly proud of how the Irukandji jellies came out above. Yes!

So next, I plopped the painting into my Photoshop file with the background and typography I created before. Looking pretty good! But there’s always a lot of digital tinkering to do.

So I started tinkering. I messed with hues, saturation, layer styles, layering, etc, etc.

And this is where I stopped for the week! This is still very rough (ie. not final-final) and needs a lot more work. I have plans for the tentacles and I’d like to smudge some colors on the bell and play with the outline to be a little more… something? But I feel like I’m heading in the right direction, and most weeks, that’s all I can really hope for!

Lastly, here’s what the storyboard looks like now with this new Spread 6-7. I also played a little bit with the typography on Spread 30-31, using the design from the half-title (page 1).

I think it looks pretty nice! Thanks for all your feedback and suggestions on my previous post. I think we’re gettin’ there, y’all!

Welp, that’s it for today! Don’t forget to come draw Off-Brand Pokemon this week with us over on MightCouldDrawToday in the Substack Chat! We’ve already gotten 9 delightfully weird creature submissions. Check them out and share your own with us!

Thanks for reading!

<3,
Christine

First, here’s what my storyboard looks like right now. I’ve finalized more of the final art spreads (what does final mean anyways?) and added a new sketch and text into the previously blank Spread 20-21. More on all that below.

Now for paid subscribers, let’s do a deep dive into those final art spreads to look at them bigger and talk about what I changed and why I did it.

I’m gonna talk about the mood of a book, balancing artwork and white space, background style, typography, a new spread sketch, movement within a page, and where I’m going next!

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I was pushing pixels and painting all day yesterday and today and finally have a sorta-kinda complete spread to show you! This is a continuation of the final art for spread 4-5. The initial process of drawing, painting, and inverting this spread can be seen here.

Here is where I left off this spread at the end of that post (a bewildering year and a half ago, goodness!):

I took a month off working on my book in December, but still had it simmering in the back of my brain. When I came back to begin working on it again this week, I realized a few things.

I know want to stick with the painting/inverting technique I was doing. But, I need to add in more whimsy and more digital details—more me. In my We Are Fungi book, (this book is a continuation of that series), I had little creepy fungi creatures that followed the main character throughout the book.

Longtime Might Could reader-drawer-artist, Craig, pointed out a while ago that I didn’t have those creatures in this book. And as I remembered that comment during my break, it was like a big ol’ lightbulb going off in my head. (Thank you, Craig!)

I was trying to make this book so different from We Are Fungi because I was afraid of repeating myself. I didn’t want to just make the same book over and over. I wanted to do something new and different. But in throwing everything out the window and starting from scratch, I lost continuity in the series. This book is being created in a completely different way than We Are Fungi was made. It looks very different. And I love that. It’s fun to make something out of my comfort zone and different than my normal drawings.

But that can also be disorienting. And in my quest to make something so new and different, I had lost my self a bit along the way

And that’s when I remembered Craig’s comment. The little creepy creatures! I needed them in this book as another thread to tie the books in this series together. And I also needed to bring more of pastel color palette, and creepy-but-cutesy style into the work also. I needed to bring in more of me.

So, that’s what I tried to do while reworking this spread this week. Here’s what that looked like:

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I’ve got a big process post of bioluminescent, psychedelic jellyfish from colored pencils to paint to the digital Wild West to show you today, so let’s dive right in!

First, I blew up the sketch from my storyboard and copied it onto watercolor paper with my light table. Then I colored in the water and cliff areas with watercolor pencils. Next, I activated the colors by painting them with water. After that, I drew in more details for the tentacles in pencil.

From there, I colored in the tentacles with my Koh-I-Noor Magic FX Pencils which have multi-colored cores (meaning 3-4 colors in each pencil) and you never quite know which color will come out! I love these pencils and the unexpected surprises they create. It forces me to loosen up and accept whatever happens! Plus it looks kinda trippy. :)

Then I colored in the oral arms (the flat, curly things hanging down from the center of the jelly). And lastly, I colored in the head before activating all that with water! Here are photos of that process:

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Each time I complete a final art spread (I’ve got six in various stages of done-ness!), I place it back into my storyboard. As I kept doing that, I began to realize is I was losing sight of my guiding star for this book: weird, trippy, beautiful, and a little dark. So this week I also worked on refining the storyboard to be more in tune with that concept.

First, I broke the storyboard up into three sections according to mood and paired a song (from my Jellyfish Inspo playlist) with each section. This way, as I continue making the final art, I have specific reminders of each spread's colors, mood, and feel according to the book’s progression from gentle/beautiful/graceful to creepy/trippy/dark.

So let’s dive into the storyboard and I’ll show you what that looks like!

Storyboard Mood #1

The first section of the storyboard is the most tame. It aims to show how beautiful, graceful, and cool Jellyfish are. It starts on the ocean surface and then stays mostly in the upper levels of the ocean. The color palette leans light blue and turquoise, and the song version of its mood is Fairy Fountain (from the Legend of Zelda) by 3000m:

Storyboard Mood #2

The storyboard's second section travels deeper into the ocean, with slightly darker blues, ending pretty deep with bioluminescent/rainbow glowing comb jellies. The mood starts out pretty light (even joking about hitchhiking crabs on 16-17), but also begins to introduce an ominous feel with hunting, stinging, grabbing, and multiplying. Basically, the mood goes from cool to creepy-cool, beautiful to eerily-beautiful. Things that are awesome to look at… from a distance. The song version of this section’s mood is Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Opening Theme by Joe Hisaishi:

Storyboard Mood #3

The storyboard's third section is now at the deepest levels of the ocean, and the colors are mostly dark-navy or black (with some pulsing phosphoresce—oh, that’s a good line!). The mood is fully WEIRD now, with bold, glowing colors, alien-looking creatures, and well… you know, a girl getting turned into a jellyfish. I’ve played around with the 30-31 spread a lot, trying to figure out just how far I should push it (I’ve got some really psychedelic ones). I’m thinking of moving that blank spread from Section 2 here to have a full bleed spread with no words where things go full trippy. We’ll see. The song version of this section’s mood is Ativan by Sufjan Stevens:

And lastly, an overall mood-song-influence of the book is Everything in Its Right Place by Radiohead:

Bringing the Darkness Into The Light

Perhaps you’re thinking, Ativan? Radiohead? Christine, those songs are too complex and weird and this mood (and your whole book) might be too dark for kids!

And to that, I say… maybe so! I aim for my books to be more like how The New York Times described Maurice Sendak’s books:

“Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche.”

Maybe this book won’t appeal to every kid. I’ve gotten at least one review of We Are Fungi (from a parent) that said it was too creepy for kids. Butterbean’s favorite book, Little Witch Hazel, also has Amazon reviews (from parents) about how that book is too creepy for kids. But Butterbean loves it! It’s a long book, but she wants to read it again and again.

Kids often understand a story more than adults—they just get it. They readily go beyond the literal interpretation and absorb the deeper meaning so much better than their parents. And they know darkness and weirdness more than we think, so why try to sweep it under the rug? Why not instead, bring the darkness out into the light and make it something that can be talked about, shared, and empathized with? Why not, instead, show that darkness is something we all feel at times and that while it can be “dark and terrifying,” it can also be “hauntingly beautiful?” I’m not talkin’ about ghosts and monsters here, y’all. Think deeper.

So anyways, I don’t care about making a book that appeals to all kids (and their parents). That just makes a boring book that makes everybody say, “Meh, I liked it.” Instead, I’d rather make a book that makes some people say, “Whoa… no”, but makes at least one kid say, “Whoa… YES.”

Thanks for reading!

<3,
Christine

P.S. Here’s a sneak peek of things gettin’ weird in the next jelly painting:

I finished another final art spread, so let’s take a look at the process!

I got a pan of watercolor paints recently and decided to try them out for this spread (so I don’t have to do as much digital editing as I did with the others). Above you can see the finished painting on the left and then the inverted colors version on the right.

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I’ve been busy pluggin’ away at We Are Jellyfish, and am finally ready to show you what I’ve worked on over the past two weeks!

Last week I started working on spread 4-5 (which actually has moved in the storyboard and is now spread 8-9… but that’s a process to share another day). You can see the beginning process of this spread in the previous two posts below, where I shared the sketches, drawings, and paintings of the jellies, and also how I started experimenting with the background.

I’ve struggled a lot with this spread, and I began to realize that it was because, unlike all my other spreads, I was attempting to create the jellyfish separate from their background. That doesn’t work with this inverse-color technique I’m using, and it doesn’t work when trying to make something look translucent. I realized the background is as important as the jellyfish if I want them to look see-through!

So, I stopped worrying about the jellyfish and started working on the background. Before, I was trying to do some spot illustration thing with the 6 separate jellyfish, seen here:

But that just wasn’t working! And so I realized I needed to switch it up and try something different. I also wasn’t happy with the way my watercolor-pencil-invert technique was working with backgrounds in my other final art. So I decided I was going to try to digitally paint an ocean background for these jellies to live on, and THEN finalize the jellies on top of that background so that they work together.

First, I decided on the basic color palette I wanted. I’ve revamped my storyboard with color (I’ll be sharing that in the next post) so I knew the sort of blues I wanted to work with. Using Kyle’s Watercolor Brushes, I painted out the colors, then smudged, fiddled, and repainted until I got it looking nice and blended.

Next, I started adding in texture, painting in water reflections and rubbing out the paint a little bit here and there.

Then, I painted in more details: water ripples, more reflections, and some little fishy shadows. Nice!

Once I was happy with the background, I turned back on my jellyfish layers and started reworking the Purple People Eater with the new background. Now that was a process, haha.

I’m glad I keep good process shots and notes, otherwise, I’d never be able to recreate this look again! I still have a little finagling I’d like to do, but overall, I think this is way better than it was before!

And finally, here’s the jellyfish and background all together! Still gotta paint those other jellies.

It feels good to have finally made some good progress on this spread. It was a tough one! It’s hard sometimes to know whether to keep pushing or scrap something completely. Sometimes it takes five minutes and sometimes it takes two weeks, but man, it feels so good when you land on something that works.

Welp, that’s all for now—thanks for reading! If you’d like to support my work, you can buy my books, take my classes, or become a paid subscriber:

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<3,
Christine

Today I have the process from the first spread of my book to share. This is called the Half-Title page and is also the opener to the book. It’s changed dramatically since the last storyboard you saw, so let’s jump in!

My Process of Spread 1-2 from Sketch to Final

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Step 1: Blow up the sketch

Step 2: Sketch general shapes in pencil

Step 3: Draw/paint a lil’ test jelly!

Step 4: Looks good? Yay! Color the lightest colors first as the base.

Step 5: Color the mid-tones next.

Step 6: Paint with water!

(This photo was taken in the evening with bad lighting… it looks less splotchy in person!)

Step 7: Draw the darkest tone + details on top.

Step 8: Pop into Photoshop, adjust levels, and invert! Oooohhh…

Step 9: Crop, add typography and scuba girl sketch.

P.S. I know this typography needs work! Trying not to get too sidetracked with getting it right for now.

Step 10: Play with colors, textures, and details digitally!

Whoo! I was really pleased with how the blue color and transparency of the jellies in the painting turned out. These are Moon Jellies by the way! This is definitely not FINAL final, but it’s going in the right direction. I’d like to spend some more time pushing this further into the weird, trippy mood I tapped into in the last post. But we’re makin’ progress, y’all! (And school starts back in two weeks so I will soon have more time to really dig in!)

Thanks for reading!

<3,
Christine

P.S. Besides becoming a paid subscriber, you can support my work by buying my brand new book, Sketchbook to Style, or forwarding this post to a friend! Already got a copy? I would super-appreciate a review!

And then off I went down a pretty fun rabbit hole.

Rabbit holes are where you get sucked in and maybe what you’re …

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