Becoming A Good Creature: Picture Book Process!

Becoming A Good Creature: Picture Boo... Into the Unknown & Autumn in Japan

Becoming A Good Creature: Picture Book Process!

Friends, it’s October!
Not only does this mean apple crisp on heavy rotation, it also means we’re celebrating a book birthday!

BECOMING A GOOD CREATURE by Sy Montgomery just landed in bookstores and on bookshelves! What better way to celebrate than to take a peek at the illustration process. We’ll meet some of the lovely animals, dive into the preliminary sketches, and see some of the final interiors. As many of you know, I worked on Sy’s best-selling adult memoir, HOW TO BE A GOOD CREATURE. When our editor Kate shared the news of a picture book version, I was over the moon.

As many of you also know, I’m a glutton for punishment when it comes to process. I’m usually a stress ball when I’m illustrating picture books. There are always tears. There is always frustration. I overthink and change course and confuse much of the process. Need Proof? Becoming A Good Creature was different though - it all seemed to fall into place without too much of a fight. After a couple of studies, I found my groove, settled into a color palette and had the whole book sketched out like nobody’s business. I’ll take it!

OK let’s jump in! But first a little more about the book from the publisher. They can describe it much more eloquently than I can.

“School is not the only place to find a teacher. In this picture book adaptation of Sy Montgomery and Rebecca Green’s New York Times best-selling How to Be a Good Creature, learn the many surprising lessons animals have to teach us about friendship, compassion, and how to be a better creature in the world.

Sy Montgomery has had many teachers in her life: some with two legs, others with four, or even eight! Some have had fur, feathers, or hooves. But they’ve all had one thing in common: a lesson to share.

The animals Sy has met on her many world travels have taught her how to seek understanding in the most surprising ways, from being patient to finding forgiveness and respecting others. Gorillas, dogs, octopuses, tigers, and more all have shown Sy that there are no limits to the empathy and joy we can find in each other if only we take the time to connect.”

- Excerpt from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery, naturalist and author, has written over 20 books. The New York Times has called her “Equal parts poet and scientist.” That’s a wonderful description. I would, though, like to add another equal part ‘friend.’ She’s instantly likeable, extremely warm and just lovely to be around. I was lucky enough to meet her in 2018 to host a book event for How To Be A Good Creature at Parnassus in Nashville. After the event, we visited the zoo, where Sy inquired who everyone was. I don’t frequent zoos much but when I do, I think it’s normal to say, ‘What is that? What’s that in the cage?’ Did you see what that was in the tank?’ But Sy never once swayed from saying, ‘Who is that? Oh I wonder who that is…who do we have here…” What a treat to meet animals with her and to see her unwavering compassion and connection to creatures of all kinds. I feel very lucky to know her and to have been asked to bring her story to life.

The Sketches

If you’ve read How To Be A Good Creature, you’ll be pleased to find some familiar faces in Becoming A Good Creature. There’s Molly, Sy’s childhood scottish terrier, the emus in the Outback, the small but ferocious winter weasel, and of course, Christopher Hogwood! I illustrated new ‘teachers’ as well, from tigers in India to lions in Africa. The opening spread has a plethora of potential teachers! Since it’s my favorite spread of the book - let’s start there.

I’m not going to lie, this spread took forever to lay out! But it was worth it in the end. After some quick doodles on paper, I did all of the sketches digitally in Procreate.

Here’s the finished sketch. A fun little fact: I added the meerkats not only because they’re some of the most heart melting creatures on the planet, but also because Sy and I met some when we had our lovely zoo visit!

Onto more sketches! My goal for the book was for it to feel created by Sy herself - hand written notes, books, photos, journal pages, etc. interspersed with illustrations of her and the animals.

Below is the storyboard. The most beneficial aspect of seeing all the pages like this is to make sure I have an even amount of layouts - spots, single pages, spreads, borders, and full bleeds. Doing this digitally is SO MUCH easier than doing it by hand. which I did not that long ago.

The Finals

Once the sketches were approved by the team at HMH and Sy, I went to work on the finals.

I first tried colored pencil but it didn’t have the punch I wanted. I switched to gouache and that was the ticket! I could make big bold marks and have lots of lush colors.

The illustrations were created in acrylic gouache, but I did edit some of the pages digitally in Procreate. The opening spread is a good example. I loved how the piece turned out but I was struggling to figure out the best way to incorporate the water (underwater and above - it’s tricky!) I edited that area digitally, adding in the otter and the turtle. While I love to paint, having digital tools has helped my process so much.
Here’s a before and after.

Above is the raw file - no editing. You see two tones because those are overlapping scans. Because I don’t have a giant fancy scanner, I have to scan all of my larger illustrations in pieces and combine them in Photoshop. Once I have all of the segments combined, I go through and heighten the levels as needed and clean off any dust/dirt/etc. I then take it into Procreate to edit if needed. This isn’t ideal but I don’t mind since I’m not a digital artist and it works for me. I always create a separate layer for edits in Procreate and I bring them back into my PSD file in Photoshop for finishing. I love Procreate but the quality for finished work is not always on point. I can lose quality or color, so imo it’s best to polish everything off back in Photoshop. Adobe or Procreate be damned, I’m not taking sides, I’m just loyal to the work and whatever it takes to get me there. I’m ruthless!

Above is a finished close up of the opening spread. I know I’ll get a lot of questions about which brushes I’m using here to match the gouache texture, but it’s nothing fancy. I use the turpentine default brush that comes with Procreate and a couple other dry media brushes.

Here are some of my other favorite illustrations from the book. Most of these had minimal digital edits, thank goodness.

Once the illustrations were finished, I worked with the designer, Jessica, who did a wonderful job laying out the book for print. I did some of the writing by hand and she chose a lovely font for most the text. They even did a beautiful silver foil on the cover! Below is some of the hand lettered text I wrote out in black colored pencil.

Once the book was designed, I recieved color proofs from the printer. For a couple of the pages, it was tricky to get just the right colors printed. With covid, it was a bit difficult for me to send the printers the actual artwork, but we worked around that and they did a great job. They were patient with my many color requests!

After the color proofs are approved, the hard part is over! After that, it’s just a matter of patiently waiting to get the actual book in your hand. And what a good feeling that is.

Once the book arrives, there’s nothing else to nitpick over. Just the satisfying feeling of giving something your all and hoping it makes its way into the hands of many readers.

If you’d like to get your copy, the best place is to order it from your local bookstore. Otherwise, you can buy it from the publisher here! You can find the replay of the Virtual Book Launch here at Porter Square Books (and order from them - I know they have signed copies!)
Also, HMH put together an awesome free activity kit for the book, and I recently created a coloring page!

Huge congrats to Sy and the team at HMH for a beautiful and much needed book. May we all learn and continue to grow, to be the very best creatures we can be.

ALSO

It’s October and I can’t go the whole month without posting SOMETHING about Fall or Halloween so this month there will be two blog posts. I’m excited to share a new series I’m working on. It’s a simple Autumn series - one for September, a spooky October painting, and one for November..before the first snow. If all goes well, fingers crossed, I’ll share the first painting mid October.

The weather is getting colder here, I feel more like myself, and with mostly all client work out of the way, I’m on to writing my own books FINALLY and I’m diving back into doing personal paintings again. If you’ve been following my work a while, you know I like to pivot. In coming months, I’m transitioning my work - taking back the reins, pushing it in new directions, allowing my voice to be stronger, and putting my own vision into the world. I’ve got plans for books, retail, sculpture…maybe a patreon? I’ve been saying that for months now, maybe I’m nervous and I just need to jump on the train. In any regard, I’m looking forward to what’s next…
And I appreciate YOU for being here with me on this journey of figuring it all out.

Happy October friends.
May the caramel and pumpkins and cinnamon and apples swallow you up and leave you feeling cozy, warm, and hopeful.

xo,

Becca

View more on Rebecca Green's website »

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