I’m in the home stretch for  illustrating The Story Circle. The deadline is a month away and I still have spreads yet to go. I’m in good shape, so though there is stress to meet the publisher’s deadline, I don’t have added stress of being behind schedule.

This will be the 6th picture book I’ve illustrated, plus I’ve also created dummy picture books – which while similar, don’t include painting final art except for a few sample spreads. At this point, I know fairly well how long it takes me to paint a spread. I allow 3 days per image. That is only the painting part. It also includes the non-painting parts of my process such as watching paint dry (haha) and stepping back from my work to make sure it holds up from a distance. It’s easy to get tunnel-vision when painting tiny details with a 000 brush. Another thing I need to do while illustrating The Story Circle. is to lay all the paintings out in chronological order and look at them as a whole. (I need to shut the cat into the basement for this part or he’ll sit on every single spread!)

Hard at work illustrating a picture book this fine Saturday morning. #WIP #kidlitart #illustration #childrensbooks

A video posted by Wendy Martin Art (@wendymartinart) on Apr 25, 2015 at 7:34am PDT

PS. It’s my birthday today. 😀