I had the honor of illustrating a bilingual kids book by Tomas Moniz (translated by Heidi Avelina Smith)
This is the first book I have ever illustrated.
It all started with trading zines. (I heart making and trading zines.) We threw around some ideas for projects to work on together. “I want to do a kids book!” Tomas told me enthusiastically over coffee.
Turned out many of his poems already felt like kids books – they are great to read aloud, have a lovely rhythm, use natural everyday language, and deal with universal themes about being human.
Once we kind of had an idea of what some of the prose might be, I did a batch of rough images to think on style and color. What a MESS.
I called my… mentor might be too formal a word…best pal who got me hooked on painting and sketching a few years back. HELP! I pleaded. She got rid of some things and suggested some things, “paint bigger, more iterations.” But her big piece of advice that I latched onto “What about a monochrome palette?”
We put a draft of the book together (with some layout & photoshop help from my generous and talented sister), and pitched it around. As it so happens AK Press was itching to do their first children’s book too.
We did a somewhat substantial revision of images and text (maybe about a third of the paintings) to take into account the current political climate (albeit in a subtle way, wanting to convey the idea of standing up when something doesn’t feel right).
The revision was completed nearly a year after the first draft. My watercolor style had evolved, becoming a bit looser, more swaths of color, more water. I had to make sure not to stray too far from the original but it was fun to change out images and experiment.
I had a hard time with the cover!! I really liked these
but the publisher suggested something that made the title more obvious. I tried a couple revisions still not letting go of my original concept. Thankfully they brought in Margaret Killjoy to help design the final cover. I love it!
I am obsessed with how text and images enhance each other, adding layers of meaning. The book is quiet and powerful, its soft textures and colors support the strong words, almost visible in the air as they are read aloud. I embraced the nature-based imagery in the text, bees and honey, parents and children, rain and mud, focusing on contexts that I hoped would speak to kids, on the playground, at a birthday party etc.
I painted everything in watercolor without sketching beforehand. Mostly indigo with pink, yellow or green to get my greys. Then scanned it all, did minimal photoshopping et voila (haha sounds simple but lots of people worked really hard to put this book together xo). Happy reading!