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 July 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!'

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 July 4th 2024 and you can pre-order it by clicking here.