Above are Tank and Topo from Playmates for Puppies to be published May 2016, prequel to Three Tales, Four Dogs ©2015. Below them are their "co-stars" from this second children's book by author Roz Silva and publisher Dayton Publishing.
Seems like I have been working on this second children's book "forever," but in reality, from conception to finish, THE JOURNEY is months of changes, tweaks, and just plain fortitude. One ebbs and flows through the excitement of creating the characters to the tweaking and tweaking and TWEAKING to get the characters to appear the same on each page. I don't think I realized how hard this would be over a period of months. I even find I am doubting myself by saying, "Are you sure you really want to be an illustrator of children's books?" And another exasperated "self-comment" is "I am so OVER THIS!"
This book has had me combing through reference material on drawing all kinds of houses, trucks, people, and DOGS! A good training, I suppose, but I still question, "Where am I?" My art toggles back and forth from cartoon images to realistic watercolor images, as I am also a trained fine artist. I bring some of the fine art skills into my cartoon images, and sometimes lose my way. My schizophrenic mind of silly to serious gets confused sometimes. Still, in all, I have created, or am in the process of creating, my "voice."
