A behind-the-scenes look into the art-making process for ‘What Rosa Brought’ When it comes to illustrating a specific location and time period, I go a bit OTT in the research phase. ‘What Rosa Brought’ takes place in Vienna in 1938-1939, and I while I would have loved to have been able to travel there in person as I did for ‘John Ronald’s Dragons: Story of J.R.R. Tolkien’, it wasn’t possible logistically…
A behind-the-scenes look into the art-making process for ‘What Rosa Brought’ The endpapers of a picture book are the first thing a reader sees when opening the book and the last thing before closing it. (They’re the pages of paper that are glued down to the cover board and connect to the book’s pages.) Depending on the printing process, the endpapers might be a solid piece of colored paper or they…
It’s always fun to see the progression of art from start to finish, and I love being able to share all the work that goes into each page of a picture book. Here’s a walkthrough of one of my favorite pieces for ‘WHAT ROSA BROUGHT’, by author Jacob Sager Weinstein about his mother’s childhood story of escaping the Nazis in Vienna in 1938-9. Before revisiting my art process for this…
Another ‘Behind-the-scenes’ peak into the art-making process for ‘What Rosa Brought’, and one of my favorite stages of book design – creating the color palette. I could spend a year painting nothing but color swatches! The first step to inspiring the colors was to draw from historic photos, 1930’s art, photos of Vienna, and other book artists color palettes that I loved (shown: Felicita Sala, Janet Hill, Laura Carlin). I start…