Illustrator Insight with Cindy Wume

We caught up with Taiwanese illustrator Cindy Wume to find out a bit more about her artwork process in creating the illustrations for My Big Book of Questions About the World (with all the Answers, too!), written by Moira Butterfield, published by Walker Books.

This was first time I'd illustrated a non-fiction picture book. I started by doodling in my sketchbook. My first goal was to create a group of kids to lead the reader through each topic in the book. When designing the characters, it was important to include kids from different cultures so that readers of all backgrounds could easily relate to the book.

The characters first came with lines in the sketchbook and then I add colours. I experimented with whether the characters should just have little black dots as the characters’ eyes or eyes with pupils against the white of the eye.
I decided to go with the latter, as I think it helped show more personality and energy.

Once I’d developed the characters I began on the book layouts, which also starts in my sketchbook.

I usually draw very rough thumbnails and doodles first to build up my visual approach. After having a general understanding of how the compositions might work, I switched to the more detailed thumbnails and sketches.

I don’t usually make colour roughs while working on artwork, but I’ve tried several in this project. I found this process helpful especially for the pages with great details.

Since this is a non-fiction project, accuracy was also important. My editor and designer, Becky and Beth, kindly offered some references for me to start this project. I also did some research within each section to make sure I understood everything the book talked about because Science wasn’t really my strongest subject back in school!
 
I even visited the local marine museums and the botanical garden while working on this project. It was very helpful to see some of the creatures in the real life so that I could have a better understanding of them while illustrating them. And for some scenes I could not get to see, for example the Earth viewed from space, I used Google Earth as a reference while illustrating them.

There are lots of interesting scenes to illustrate in this book, but I particularly enjoyed drawing the scenes of sea creatures and animals.

While working on the sea life pages, I first had to research all the creatures appearing on this page. To make their proportions correct, I made notes on their approximate length before illustrating them. At the time, my roommate was quite obsessed with squid and shared so many facts about them with me, so I understood how intelligent they are. Therefore, I also included this creature in the scene although it was not actually mentioned in the text!

As for the animal scene, in addition to some ‘regular’ animals, I have also draw ‘special’ animals such as wombat, Tasmanian devil, the opossum and the chameleon. I think it would be fun for kids to spot those they already know and discover some new animals.

My artworks are mostly done by hand. I usually draw with gouache first for the colours and then dip pen and ink on top for the lines. And sometimes I use colour pencils to add textures.

In this project, I also used digital skills for some pages such as the title pages of each topic. I drew the elements and the background separately and then merged them in Photoshop.

While working on the endpapers, I wanted to create the decorative scenes covering every subject of this book.
I used the foliage to create spaces for every subject and they grew into a forest with so many things to hunt for.

The way I created the endpapers was to draw one with a black colour on the paper first and then scan it into the photoshop. So we could choose the colour to match the cover for the books in the end.

The cover was the hardest part for me of this book. At first, I wanted to create one with lots of details so we experimented several versions with this concept.

After discussing with the team, the art director suggested going with a simpler design. So we chose the composition similar to the first spread of the ‘Our World’ page. I think with this option, the colours help the book stand out more. I thought it was a pity that my favourite topic – animals – couldn’t have a major appearance on the cover so I hid them in the cover. If you look closely, you will discover that the little puppy and leopard are in the spaceship together with the kids!