A Very Poorly Timed Nap

A personal project

Two very special little people have just entered my life and I'm absolutely besotted with them. My twin sister has just given birth to the most beautiful and chunky little boy and a life-long close family friend has brought a gorgeous little girl into the world.

Before the babies arrived and when my sister and friend were planning their baby showers, they asked guests to bring books for the new arrivals to help start up a library each.

Charlotte Douglass is part of our Newport family through marriage and is also close to our family friend. When the opportunity to create a special book for these new loved ones in our lives arose, Charlotte got in touch to ask if I'd illustrate the story she'd written.

I jumped at the opportunity and we set to work together to produce something meaningful that we could add to the libraries for the babies.

The turn around for the book was quite quick so we decided to produce one illustration and give it plenty of time rather than rush out two or more.

I read through Charlotte's work and chose a scene that I thought would wrap up the whole story nicely. I drew up some thumbnails and we decided on option 'E' together.

The story itself covers a whole day in a sunny village where people are out walking dogs, gardening and someone is even playing a trombone in a brass band.

I started to look at warmer colours and think about how the end illustration would look, by which time it would be a cosy bed time scene.

For this project I chose coloured pencils, I'm much more confident at using them compared to gouache and thought that this might add to the speed of the project - as well as add textures.

Here is the final draft illustration, I found this useful to do to see how the colours would work together and to work out if there was anything else I needed to change before committing to the final image.

I find it useful to have a full plan with all of the creative decisions already made before I set to work on the final.

Ta da! The final image!

The final image was set into a 12x15cm book and finished with little thread ties on the binding.

We've now gifted the babies their books and can't wait to snuggle up and read them the story.

Tools

Pencils -these links are affiliate links*

Faber-Castell Dark Indigo 157

Faber-Castell Olive green yellowish 173

Faber-Castell Beige red 132

Faber-Castell Venetian red 190

Derwent Drawing Solway Blue 3615

I really enjoyed this project, narrowing down what we could make and how it would look so we wouldn't be over stretching it. We could add more to it in the future if we felt the need to. It was a pleasure to work with Charlotte and we hope the little ones will enjoy story time.

Learn more about how you can create your own little illustrated publication here

*This post includes affiliate links. Whenever you buy something through one of these, I get a small commission without any extra cost to you. This helps to support my blog, thank you.