Drawing the pictures for The Lion’s Share
1. Figuring out the style
Every new book I do seems to call for a different style of illustration. Often, the hardest part of starting the pictures is figuring out what that style is going to be.
For The Lion’s Share, I began by sketching animals using a bunch of different techniques to see how they might look.
2. Ink textures
At one point, I experimented with dripping black India ink onto wet newsprint paper. I wasn’t trying to make anything specific—I just wanted to see what would happen as the ink spread across the page. It was really surprising and fun.
3. Adding color
After they dried, I picked my favorite patterns and scanned them into the computer. Then, using Photoshop, I added colors based on the values in the texture. In this example, all the dark areas become red, the light areas become yellow, and the grays are different shades of orange.
Final steps
In the end, I used the computer to combine these textures with my pencil drawings to create the final illustrations.