Space on the page

Illustration Friday's theme this week is "Space." Some might obviously interpret this cosmically, but for me this week, space has been about telling a story... or more to the point, how my characters take up space on the page.

Before the SCBWI intensive three weeks ago I rushed through sketches for my new book Twelve Months of Monsters in order to have a dummy to show at the conference. Turns out that's a great way to see what's wrong with your book. On the drive home from Kinkos I had a deeply unsettled feeling that something was just not quite right with all these monsters now that they were actually enlarged full size and paginated into a book. So this week I've been reworking some of them and rewriting some of the text in the process. In the beginning I had held back doing so many of my "crazy" angles and cropping... everyone always comments positively on them, but sometimes I think "is it too much, is it just exhausting?" Maybe it is exhausting, but, in the words of Sammy Davis Jr., I just gotta be me. Now my monsters now have turns, twists, and close-ups on their pages. Their space is more dynamic I think (read: i hope.) In the redoing I was able to play up the hidden story of how they come alive from the calendar. Below are the before and after shots:

Week by week and day by day
Twelve months of monsters starts this way.

Before:

After:

In March when winter ends,
A kite will soar on monster winds

Before:

After:

Week by week and day by day a monster's year goes 'round this way. (this is actually the last page of the book and intended to show the little monster finally getting a bite as she is tucked back into the calendar)
Before:

After: