Follow @tinyrexwrecks

Tuesday 5 March 2024

Watts

This is Watts. He's one half of Watts and Whiskerton. He's the main character in my new book Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure. Pearl (Whiskerton) is equally important, but Watts is a writer and he narrates each books for us.



Watts comes from a family of famous detectives but he's not sure if he wants to be a detective too. So when his parents venture off to investigate a case, Watts heads off to Whiskerton Manor for a holiday. There he befriends Pearl Whiskerton. She loves mysteries and persuades Watts to help her investigate a series of strange goings on.


Watts actually began life as Watson. I wanted to create a character in the tradition of Watson and Hastings, a slightly silly detective's assistant. In the story I was writing Watson was much older and through his investigation he met Pearl, who was young and smart and methodical, and much more likely to solve the case. I abandoned this idea quickly because what Pearl really needed was a friend to help her solve the case, someone as intelligent as she was. I realised they had to be the same age. And suddenly they made sense as a pair. 


We changed his name to Watts before the first draft was written. We wanted a W name to sit nicely with Whiskerton. My editor, Ella, suggested Walker because it had a nice dog themed link and I really liked it until I thought of Watts. I loved how it reminded me of light bulbs and bright ideas, and how his name sounded like a question. He is also the son of Mr and Mrs Watts so technically he's still a Watts' son. 


I can't find my earliest sketchbooks but here is a drawing from an abandoned early plot idea.






Eagle-eyed readers will notice that this scene is still in the first book, just changed a little. This was drawn in pencil and then scanned into my computer. I love drawing in pencil but I do spend a lot of time tidying the outlines. I decided to see if it was possible to get a pencil-like quality digitally since I had 128 pages to illustrate. Here's one of the first digital tests.






I was pleased with the way this turned out and decided to make my first book 100% digitally. It did save me a lot of time when I was drawing outlines. 


Another early test that I really liked had the characters with no outlines at all but I realised I had to draw the outline, colour the character and then remove the outline so I might as well save myself time and keep the outline. Here's a peek at the finished artwork.





I'm really pleased with how it turned out.


Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure publishes on June 4th 2024 and is available for pre-order now by CLICKING HERE. Pre-orders really help authors because they show publishers and booksellers that there's interest in a book. And when it gets delivered you think, 'Ooh, a gift from my past self. How nice!'


Friday 1 March 2024

Speech bubbles

My next book features one of my favourite things: speech bubbles. And my two main characters have their own designs.


I wanted both Watts and Pearl's speech to have straight edges to show they are logical and that they have something in common but I also wanted their speech to reflect their individual personalities.

Pearl is unpredictable, spontaneous and quite loud so her speech bubbles have sharp, oddly angled edges and are a bold colour.

Pearl


Watts is more considered, speaks softly and is a little unsure of himself so his have rounded edges and no colour.

Watts


I wanted readers to be able to easily tell who was speaking when they speak to one another, and on occasions when the characters are very small the speech bubbles help identify them. Like this...


Everyone else in the book uses the same soft pink bubble. To have too many variations would get visually busy.

This is Houndstooth the gardener.

Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure publishes on June 4th 2024 and you can pre-order it by clicking here.

Friday 23 February 2024

Roughs

When you illustrate a book you go through a stage called roughs. These are ideas of what will be drawn on every page of the book, bearing in mind where text will fit, and as their name suggests they are rough drawings. There are varieties of roughs though. I've seen some much looser than mine, and others so polished they look like finished artwork. Because picture books are so much about the images I make my roughs while I write. I can't separate the two processes.


Watts and Whiskerton is a highly illustrated young fiction book and I wanted the illustrations to be as important as the text. They hold visual pieces of information and readers will flit between the body of text, illustrations with speech bubbles and little comic strips. It sort of looks like the inside of my head. This is how I think. So as I wrote the first draft I created an even rougher set of roughs to send to the editor with the text to help her make sense of the book. It also really helped me pace the page turns and develop the plot. I call these rough roughs.

Here is the rough rough of the museum.


At this stage it's not necessary for me to know what the little details in the book will be, and to be honest I was scared to draw a whole museum.

Once the text was finalised and set by the art director, Sarah, we flipped the image to make sure the text was read before the 'Wow!' and more detail was added. This is the proper rough, there's a whole chunk of time scheduled to make these. This a simple spread but on others we had to cut text to fit or adjust the layout altogether.

The pink part is where you can't put any important information in case it gets chopped off.

This is the final image.

The black line is where the pages will be cut.

The details include some exhibits for Watts and Whiskerton to investigate later and nods to some famous paintings including A Bigger Splash by David Hockney because a swimming pool is a plot point in the book.


Watts and Whiskerton; Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure publishes June 4th 2024 and is available to buy by clicking here.

Friday 16 February 2024

Cover Ideas

 My last post was the cover reveal of my next book, Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure. Here's a little breakdown of how the cover was made.


Usually when you're part way through colouring the insides of a book someone will mention the cover, and you think, 'The Cover?!' Or I do because I never have a vision for book covers until I'm asked to think about it. So when the cover question arises I sit and sketch little thumbnail ideas and I send these to the art director, Dominica, to see if she thinks any of them are worth developing further. Sometimes it's elements for various ideas.

Can you see which one became the cover?

We hadn't yet discussed how the title was going to appear but she soon sent some variations on the Watts and Whiskerton branding for me to choose from, picked some favourite ideas and made some suggestions about moving forward. We'd discussed using a faux quarter binding too (that little decorative strip down the book's edge.)

Then I sent these...



We decided to use the lower left torchlit image but to add some bones and treasure for hints of colour, and I was asked to send some colour ideas. I sent endless variations. Honestly, there were so many. The paw print pattern is used inside the book and we decided this would work nicely for the quarter binding too. Here are a select few of the colour trials.

There were also decisions to be made about Pearl's outline and Watts' suit colour because the insides of the book are limited to black, white and red but on the cover we can do what we want.

 


We picked the blue suit.




Watts and Pearl together.



From then on it's a case of me making the thing properly, asking for suggestions when I get stuck and then adding more until we all agree that it's finished. We decided to contain the Watts and Whiskerton lettering in a frame and removed the house silhouette. They were fighting each other. I added some coins and rose petals to add colour to the lower underground section and we used the red from the inside of the book for the quarter binding. I think it turned out nicely. Here's the final cover...



Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure publishes June 4th 2024 and is available to buy at your local friendly bookshop, just ask them. Online you can buy here.

Friday 17 November 2023

Cover reveal!

 This is the front cover of my next book, Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure.


This book will be a two colour chapter book for slightly older readers than my usual work. The plot is a mystery so it's a little more complex than a picture book but it's very highly illustrated so really ages 5 and up can enjoy it.

You can pre-order the book by clicking here. Pre-ordering is really helpful for authors because it lets people know you are interested in their books. So if you want a copy of any book don't be afraid to ask your local bookshop to order it in before it's released. You can also order online early.

I'll post a blog about how the cover art was made soon.


Thursday 2 November 2023

Book one done!

 This was me last week.


I finally finished the artwork for my next book, Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure. It is the first book in my young fiction series to be published by Piccadilly Press. You can read more about it by clicking here.

I'm really excited about. It's a highly illustrated mystery featuring Watts, the dog, and Pearl Whiskerton, the cat. Together they team up and solves a series of mysterious goings on at Whiskerton Manor.

Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure will publish in July 2024.

Tuesday 31 October 2023

Waterstones Best (wee) Books 2023

 I was really excited this week to find out that Wee Unicorn is on Waterstones Best Books 2023!

It's in amongst a lovely bunch of children's books, a great place to start your xmas list making. I've already spotted a few I'd like this year. There are lists of grown up books too but let's face it, the children's sections are the best ones. Thank you to all the lovely bookshops and booksellers who have been kind enough to recommend my book this year.