Some pages from the rough sketchbook where I doodle thumbnails and let lines search for the story that I used for Folketale week. These small boxes with lines that don’t seem to make a lot of sense, that’s how many illustrations and series start.
I call it drawing out loud 🙂 (like thinking out loud but with pencils)

Before I decided on collage, I’ve been looking at the setting, time (in history), characters, different styles, etc… I collected a lot of reference images of all the things that matched the life(style) of my character.

Color tests, matching the story to the words of the Folktale Challenge.

Alternative scenes.

At some point (a few actually), I was ready to throw it all in the bin. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel me. It didn’t look enough like a series. With only a few days before the start, I had a Zoom meeting with Sarah and a few others, and that conversation about the story, the keywords, the sequence, and some of my options felt like a breath of fresh air (and relief).
I certainly don’t like all the images, and if it had been a picture book, I would have had the time to redo some until I got it right. But oh well, that’s part of the challenge, it’s only a few weeks to get it all done 🙂