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Early cover ideas
This week we sat down with new artist Isabelle Follath to talk more about her process in creating Joy, her first illustrated picture book that published last week.
I had just finished an intensive five-week class about illustrating children’s books with Art Director Zoë Tucker and agent Lilla Rogers, when I was commissioned by words&pictures (and imprint of Quarto) to illustrate a picture book for them. A beautiful and heart warming story by Corrinne Averiss about a little girl and her grandmother and the nature of happiness and empathy.
I had just finished an intensive five-week class about illustrating children’s books with Art Director Zoë Tucker and agent Lilla Rogers, when I was commissioned by words&pictures (and imprint of Quarto) to illustrate a picture book for them. A beautiful and heart warming story by Corrinne Averiss about a little girl and her grandmother and the nature of happiness and empathy.
Naturally I was thrilled to bits and also slightly overwhelmed. But remembering what I’d learned in the class, I started by drawing just accessories for the characters to get a feeling for them (in this case: clothes, toys, lots of cakes, blankets and comfy chairs). I love drawing characters and Matthew Morgan and Sarah Chapman-Suire, the lovely creative team at words&pictures, gave me free reign. So the main characters were developed quite fast.
I also had to think about how I would illustrate joy, an abstract feeling that means different things for everyone. I ended up exploring abstract shapes and colours that changed slightly with every joyful experience of the main character. Brian Wildsmith and Björn Wiinblad and their exuberant use of colour were a big influence for me.
I also had to think about how I would illustrate joy, an abstract feeling that means different things for everyone. I ended up exploring abstract shapes and colours that changed slightly with every joyful experience of the main character. Brian Wildsmith and Björn Wiinblad and their exuberant use of colour were a big influence for me.
Sarah and Matthew were very supportive and the roughs for the cover and spreads were accepted with minimal changes. Next I worked up the coloured spreads in watercolour and pencil, drawing some elements separately and putting everything together in Photoshop. This allowed me to adjust the colours and move the ‘whooshes’ around. Which I did extensively; I was endlessly moving butterflies and swirls of colour around the page! All in all it was a very intuitive process. I tried to re-enact the emotions the story was conveying and moved from warm and to cool colours, and from busy to calm compositions. I would definitely do more planning on the colour scheme for my next book, but maybe for Joy this more organic process was the right thing to do.
Working on Joy was a wonderful experience and it was a real blessing to have such a lovely, supportive and encouraging creative team behind me. I’ve learned so much and will continue to do so while illustrating future stories. For me, this is the true beauty behind creating a book.