31. Final Art Spread 4-5

We Are Jellyfish: Picture Book Process

Hey y’all!

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.

Creepies from We Are Fungi

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: