I am still busy working on the illustrations I need for the fairytale book and things are going well. Below is the final version of Leto, the little hero of our story. If haven´t seen it yet, you can check out the different versions Leto went through here, here and here 🙂
While I was drawing the images for the story, I realised that there were a lot of details I had not finalised yet. Like: How many fingers does a Wan Tau have? Are the pockets sewed to Leto’s jacket really necessary?…
The Wan Tau have four fingers on each hand. I tried out hands with five fingers, but I just did not look right.
And because I imagined Leto as one of the Wan Taus who get into the outside world in the search for food and useful things, I figured that he – of course – would need some pockets (besides the backbag). I also imagined that Leto would always carry handy stuff like some yarn, a little slingshot, some pebble stones in his pockets.
I haven´t erased the pencil lines yet, so you can see them below the inkings. Once the illustration is cleaned and coloured, Leto will look much more vivid.
Initially, I had planned to colour the inkings with watercolours, like I always do. But I am afraid, that a lot of the watercolour details will get lost during the printing process so I will do some tests with inks. It is a bit harder, because you have to nail it at the first try. But I think that it will be worth it. 🙂 Did I mention, that I´m creating all the illustrations inside my sketchbooks – not working digital at all. Some might say, that drawing the book illustrations the old fashioned way is somehow stupid, because it takes longer and you have no [Ctrl]+[z] button, but it feels more honest to me working that way.
What do you think about this little fella? Feel free to leave a comment below!
I create worlds. John E. Brito's Blog 
What a great little drawing of Wan Taus, really like this. Always nice to see a sketch develop into a character over time. Nice to hear you are doing the illustrations in your sketchbook rather than just digital, makes the process a lot more fun I think – more unique and personal
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Yes, I think that way, too. I encountered some problems during the colouring process, though: Moleskine changed the quality of its notebooks *again* and the paper behaves (when you work with watercolours) in a different way now. I´ll look for a way to work around the new issues as I am really not very fond of colouring it digitally. 🙂
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I’m sure you will figure out the best way to do the colouring process, sometimes it can also makes the end result even better when its more challanging to get right, and it will be better than the digial option.
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Thank you very much, Paul. It´s true, if there is no challenge things would become boring some day. And I have actually solved the problem yet. It is a combinatin of a different water to pigment ratio and the pressure you put onto the brush 🙂
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That’s good to hear. A challenge can be fun to sort out. When I get stuck writing I always tell myself, the words are already written, otherwise I wouldn’t have been interested in writing about the subject in the first place. Then I leave it or sleep on it and let my subconscious do the work, and nine times out of ten I go back to it the next day and nail it right away. Glad you have figured out the combination of pigments and water ratio, bet you were really pleased.
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Hey, that’s an interesting thought about how to see the writing process. I guess, I’ll try it out, too 🙂
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Cheers. I find it works for me, really helps. Just something I’ve figured out myself really, also keeps you in a positive frame of mind when the words just don’t seem to want to work right o the page.
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Yes, I think, too, that trying to staying positive is the best way to get around most problems 🙂
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