Thumbnails for Applesauce
Today I was scheduled for Jury Duty. Last night I called the hotline that tells you if you have to show up or not. Miracle of miracles, some of us did not have to appear in court today. I was one of the lucky ones. I wonder how they pick out those who do not have to appear for jury duty each day. I have been blessed.
I had a list of work tasks left over from Tuesday and so I continued with them. I never did get to my daily painting on Tuesday. So I painted two of them today. I used a couple of sketches I had made last year but had never painted. They are both of Liam. I already have two paintings of him in my 2021 Aliens. These two from today are him as a moody teenager.
When I finished my daily paintings, and ate lunch and picked up kids from their mid term exams, I went shopping, encouraged my son to make lots of variations of rice crispy treats and pretty much avoided doing the next thing on the list which was:
Drawing thumbnails for a 32 page layout for my new story Applesauce: A Paige and Webb Adventure.
I decided to just do the next step which was to find a 32 page spread template. I usually grab it from Julie Olsen’s webpage, but I guess it has been a while since I’ve looked for it. After 5 or 10 minutes looking for it on her webpage, I decided to just google it. I ended up using the one from THIS website and it was great!
I started to build the picture book thumbnails. I can get impatient with the process here. I want my ideas to already be formed. I distinctly remember commenting to myself more than once that this felt a lot like work.
A few days ago when I wrote up my first draft of the story, I had made a list of scenes that might be in the book. Since I had already started sketching those scenes, I drew heavily from them. Thank you past self.
Sometimes the ideas flowed and sometimes they screeched to a halt. I must be getting better at this, though, because I was usually able to patiently coax myself to continue with the next spread.
At one point I realized that I needed another full spread. I looked back on my thumbnails and knew Paige couldn’t look for applesauce for 2 whole spreads. I became really conscious of the beats of my story. There are times that I need the story to slow down. Take it’s time. Let the viewer sit with it. And other times that all I needed to say is “Paige can’t find the applesauce.”
This first draft of thumbnails showed me where to trim words. Each word in this book must be precise. If I can replace 2 words with one, then I must. No extra words allowed.
When I finished this first draft, I had rearranged elements, changed the setting for the climax of the story, and redrawn several thumbnails. Then I gave myself permission to stop. I already know that there are edits in the thumbnails and the manuscript that I need to make. For instance, my husband couldn’t decipher my thumbnails. My next step is to redraw the thumbnails and them blow them up to a larger size and draw them again.
I feel really good about the point the story is in right now. I might just finish the dummy book by then end of the month.
