My Process Writing and Illustrating Innis and Ernest
The Write Stuff…
Picture This…
It’s About Time…
The real life “Ernest”
In 2009 our family moved from Kansas City to Shalom, a Christian retreat center. There we met John and Grace, whose family founded the ministry, and who welcomed us into a new adventure. After Grace went to be with the Lord, we had the privilege of living with John until his passing at 103 years old.
I had the idea for a story about our time with John, and it developed quickly (especially compared to a Christmas story I had been working and reworking for over two years!) A little boy who was used to being an only child must come to terms with a new family member when Mom and Dad bring home…an elderly man. I drew from memories with John, trying to imagine our youngest son’s feelings. He was two years old when John moved in and did NOT like that his breakfast seat and his car seat were always next to Uncle John’s. (Fast forward three years when we told the boys of John’s passing, this same son said, “I’m tired,” and went to lay in his bed. It was his little guy way of having some time to process the sad news.)
What’s in a name…
One night laying in bed, I wondered what the little boy’s name could be. I started with our boys’ names, Simon, Louis, Martin, and Wallace, and realized they all end either with in or is. How funny! Ernest was a good, old man name, and it fit well with Innis. Before I drifted off to sleep, my characters had their names.
Getting to work…
Before I had a working manuscript, I started taking online classes with Storyteller Academy. My first class was a character design class, and I worked up some sketches of Ernest. I loved them! He was so cute and looked like the real Uncle John with his tucked in T-shirt. I played around with an Innis character, and later I sketched a scene to accompany a draft of Innis and Ernest for a critique group. This scene didn’t make it into the book, but I still love the story it tells.
Giving Characters Character!
1: Early character doodles
2: I used this scene as reference to capture the character of each character
3: An early character “line-up”
4: A later line-up; trying to keep character consistency in each scene was a challenge for me!
Which came first; the words or the drawings?
Choosing words and developing pictures was a fluid and concurrent process. The manuscript informed the drawings, and the visuals directed the words. Fashioning the story into a “dummy” book format as soon as possible helped integrate the words and pictures into a cohesive story-telling tag-team. The manuscript and illustrations went through many transformations during the year-long editing process.
1: I began with my manuscript and made art notes, brainstorming illustrations.
2: Then I made a super rough dummy to establish timing, flow, and page-turns. (There were over a countless versions of dummies like this.)
3: Next I tightened up each illustration/spread. I liked to use photos as reference, and our boys and my husband were models (AKA troopers).
4: The next step was to add value (light, medium, dark). These three b/w scenes were included in our submission to editors along with a sample cover and painted interior spread.
5 and 6: Using objects of colors I’m drawn to and mood boards of art I like, I made a digital color palette and added color digitally. (Ignore my cotton ball earplugs. Our house is NEVER loud.)
7: Then came mixing paint to match the digital colors. Easier said than done! Skin tones alone took me hours to figure out.
8: I batch painted characters and foreground elements. Then I painted backgrounds and merged them digitally in Photoshop.
9: There were countless drafts for each illustration and spread. This file folder is full of them.
10 and 11: Here is the cover and interior spread that went to editors along with the manuscript.
Reference Photos and Tireless Models
See if you can match the reference photo with the drawing it inspired!
Making of the “FOR-EV-ER” Spread
Here’s a series of photos showing the inception of “Spread 4” as I called it. This was the scene I chose to submit to editors along with my manuscript to show my illustration style. I liked that it showed the personalities and relationship of Innis and Ernest as well as a fun interaction of words and images. Unless a submission comes from an author/illustrator, an editor will acquire a manuscript and partner it with a different illustrator. I deeply desired to communicate the visual story of Innis and Ernest in addition to the written one, and I am deeply grateful to B&H Kids for the opportunity to tell the whole story of Innis and Ernest.
If you’re still reading, you might be interested to know…
My pursuit of bookmaking began in 2017 with an idea to make a stinky scratch-and-sniff Christmas book for friends and family. It felt good to be back creating with pen and paper after an 11-year hiatus while tending to little humans. (Which is creative in a different way!) This lead me to attending writing conferences, joining SCBWI (Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and Storyteller Academy, online classes taught by professionals in the Kid Lit world. I learned about industry players and processes, how to improve my craft, the importance of connecting with other writers, artists, and critique partners, and that becoming published can take 6-10 years. I was anxious to see and share ideas in print, but I didn’t mind the timeline considering I have a teaching job at home with our boys until…2032!
For a year-and-a half I scrambled for any free time to work, determined not to wish away or miss this special season of life with family, all the while reading books—ok, skimming them—on how being too busy is bad for us! It felt super messy, and I was often irritable (and I’m sure annoying to others). I did my best to “do the work so you’re ready when opportunity knocks”, and each time a door would open for which I felt inadequately prepared, there would just “happen” to be a class or webinar to help me walk through..
Opportunity presented itself in December 2020 when Keely Boeving of WordServe Literary responded to a pitch of Innis and Ernest during a #FaithPitch Twitter pitch party, and I am so fortunate to have signed with her as my literary agent. We developed a proposal for the book, submitted to editors in March and signed with B&H Kids in April 2021.
Our Kickoff Meeting was in May, and after a year of manuscript and illustration edits, I turned in final artwork the following May, 2022. Our first marketing meeting was in August of 2022, and Innis and Ernest launched on November 8, 2022, my 44th birthday. B&H Kids lovingly stewarded the story through the entire publishing process. It’s hard for me to believe I’m writing about something that five years ago was a “maybe one day” dream. It truly is an honor to be able to share it with you. Thanks for reading. :)