Dans mon jardin
Hello everyone!
I’m finally back on the blog after a few months off. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying this lovely time of the year that is Spring. The weather has been quite unpredictable here in Scotland, lots of moody days but some sunshine every now and then which is wonderful for the mood after a long and gray winter.
Today I would like to share with you the exciting news: the books I worked on most of last year are now out! Well, they’ve been since April but I couldn’t find the time to write about it here before. As always on this blog, I like to show you all the little sketches and work behind the scene!
A few words about the collection: last year I was approached by the french publisher Gallimard to illustrate a series of books called “Dans mon jardin” (“In my garden”). It's a collection where children can learn about the secret life of all the little creatures that live in our garden.A way to encourage them to look around, introduce them to local biodiversity and protect our precious little neighbours.
The first title of the collection was the hedgehog (I was so pleased with it!). The client knew exactly what they wanted in term of colours and textures. They approached me saying they liked my work with colour pencils and wanted a similar rendering.
Hedgehog studies
I’m not super familiar with pencils, I like to make small and spontaneous illustrations with them in my sketchbooks but I had never drawn full scenes with backgrounds. That was a real challenge and it took me quite a while and lots of trials and errors to figure out a technique I was comfortable with and a result that the client liked.
I started doing some quick sketches to see if I could mix some gouache with pencils on top and obtain a nice texture but it didn’t work out. After a few back and forth emails I realised that I had to change my perspective about background and use of white/empty spaces. These samples were too muddy and messy, we wanted something more minimalist with each element drawn separately in order to make it pop out on the white background.
I then had to figure out a way to use the same technique for larger scenes, which again was quite a challenge in itself!
Below (on the right) is the hedgehog colour studies I sent to the client, they were enthusiastic about it so I knew I was finally going in the right direction! I kept searching and experimenting to find ways to draw full scenes while preserving the textures and work with white/empty space.
After a while I started realising that using traditional techniques would take a really long time and would be a nightmare in case of corrections (and I knew there would be revisions and adjustments to make along the way).
Now I’m not good at digital art at all, I’ve got very little experience and only with Procreate on the iPad. But I had already worked with pencils on the project so I thought it would be worth giving it a try. I scanned my pencil illustrations and tried to replicate the technique with the same colours, using a few pencil brushes on Procreate (I used the ones already available).
The second page made with Procreate. I worked in the exact same way I would have with colour pencils!
I quickly got comfortable with the technique. In hindsight it was an excellent decision, if I had kept going with traditional pencils I wouldn’t have been able to respect the deadline. I also loved that I was able to work on this project in different places!
The first spread I worked on, I spent so much time on this one! Can you spot our little hedgehog friend?
After many months of hard work, what a magical moment to be holding the books in my hands! The quality is gorgeous, it was quite an emotion to see the result of a great team working together. The text by Emmanuelle Kecir-Lepetit is delightful and it was a pleasure to be drawing pictures along her words.
Soon it’s going to be time to start working on the next title, a feathery friend!
That’s it for today, thank you for reading me!
I wish you all a wonderful Spring 🌞
Cécile
