Art for Pembral Forgets

I’ve illustrated Pembral Forgets written by Steve Tubbs and in my last post I talked about my process of creating the cover and my leaf motif that flows through the book.

Well here, below, are some of the finished illustrations with the text so you can see what I mean.

Later on in the story there are some really large leaves… but as you can tell from the images above I depict leaves from a distance as well as nearer to hand.

I also use leaf shapes as logos on story related objects… for example in the photo below look for the leaf on the sugar and the market sacks. I do this in multiple places within the story in order to emphasize the fall leaves aspect of the story – and to visually bring the leaf motif and good food motifs together.

There are illustrations on every one of the 38 pages of Pembral Forgets… lots of leaves blowing through this book!

Since the author Steve Tubbs was inspired by thoughts of himself as a kid and memories of his own mother – I wanted my illustrations to have a warm soft nostalgic feeling in addition to the colors of Fall. So I used a cream colored handmade watercolor paper for my ink and gouache illustrations.

If the pages above tempt you to see the whole story. You can see it for free on Storyberries.com where they’ve published both ebook and audiobook versions of Pembral Forgets! Here’s the link https://www.storyberries.com/bedtime-stories-pembral-forgets-short-stories-for-kids/

And here, below, is what the printed artist book cover looks like. My leaf pattern reproduced well and I’m very pleased with the color reproductions! You can access the printed books here https://www.blurb.com/b/10507043-pembral-forgets

Since the warm, creamy, yet fall colors are what I wanted for the pages in the artist book reproductions – I’m also making the original artist book box (talked about in my last post) have a similar cream color on the book-shaped box edges where pages are.

I still have lots of work to do on the one-of-a-kind artist book box that will hold all of the original illustrations and text. Also there’s a few more pages for the one-of-a-kind book to do…. more about that in future posts.

And I’m in the process of making a webpage about Pembral Forgets. It includes a short conversation with the author, Stev Tubbs, as well as images of more of the finished art. You can see it here: https://sueclancy.com/portfolio/pembral-forgets/

But in case you think I came up with the cover and these illustrations perfectly right from the first: Here’s a leaf motif pattern I tried before hitting upon the motif and color scheme I finished with.

I decided this leaf pattern was too green and too uniformly regular. Then I proceeded to do the pattern I showed you in my last post and what you see on the Pembral Forgets finished book cover. But as a pattern design goes this more-green autumn leaf pattern was fine – it just didn’t fit the creamy nostalgic vibe I wanted for Pembral Forgets.

But I decided the green autumn leaf pattern would be fun fabric for dinner napkins for a fall table setting. You can access this fabric on my Spoonflower shop here https://www.spoonflower.com/designs/6316427-autumn-leaves-by-sueclancy

Speaking of good food and the fall dinner table: I made this soup this week and it was satisfyingly heart and tummy warming. https://gratefulgrazer.com/home/vegan-potato-soup/

I’m still happily reading “European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman” by Theodora Goss – and taking things a wee bit slower but I’ll see you here next Monday! Stay safe – and here’s hoping for a better new year for everyone.