The "blank" page

I would like to describe in more detail how sketching in my job has positively changed my creative process. Let’s recap what I did for book 2. I started out with a very strong image that kept popping into my mind, kept me up at night, etc etc etc until I drew it to get it out of my head. This in turn unleashed a torrent of illustrations, an amazing experience, but certainly not a normal one for me. By contrast, coming up with the illustrations for book 1 came rather tortuously. The pages were an endless blank sea, much as I'm showing with this image of the thumbnail squares I recently faced filling in for book 3. The text has already been laid into each square, for pacing purposes.

As you know from the last post, this time I decided to try traditional sketches. With the text placed in each square, I had a starting point for the image that could go in the square, but remember, you don’t always have to “match” what’s happening in text with the imagery. Regarding text, you also don’t have to spell everything out; instead you can use it to suggest what might happen next, or what had occurred immediately before.

The hardest thing as an artist (who is constantly seeking the approval of others) is to try and remember that these thumbnails are not supposed to be masterpieces, and that we shouldn't hold them as precious. They are supposed to become a road map that tells a visual story. They also show you if your story is visually a cohesive story; can you tell what the story is about if there wasn't any text? The thumbnail format will reveal these issues early on in the process, before your artwork truly enters the "precious" stage. And what’s more, if a thumbnail isn’t working, you can throw it out knowing you didn’t really spend much time on it.

Can anyone guess another name for this type of format? Answer, next post!