Making Wee Puffling

Wee Puffling is a picture book about a young puffling who doesn't want to go out to sea with the other puffins. He loves his home too much. Instead, he decides to hide and is shocked to suddenly discover he is alone on the island. Wee Puffling must set off on an adventure of his own to find his friends.

The artwork for the book was made with paint and assembled digitally. The process echoes the way screen prints are made except I don't print my images on paper, I make them on my computer as it's easier to experiment and make adjustments.

All of the puffin outlines were drawn in pencil.

I chose to draw all the other animals digitally in Procreate. Their outlines just looked better that way. Once I had my outline drawn I would print out the spread at a small size to use as the guide to paint over.

My printer is old and only prints in red now.

I was using a limited palette and would paint each colour separately. These separations are painted in black because it scans clearly. Once I have them scanned into my computer I make them the correct colour. The painted separations look like this.

I paint them on tracing paper so I can see the drawing underneath as I paint, and I can make sure each new colour is in the right place. Sometimes I want two colours to overlap to make a third colour. Imagine the layers like coloured glass. Where there is only yellow it will be yellow. Where there is only blue it will be blue. But where the yellow and blue overlap it will create green.

All the layers spread out. Top to bottom will be blue, pink, yellow.

Layered on top of one another. They can look quite confusing in this state.

Let's add some colour! 

This is the outline layer with the yellow painted layer. And below is the teal layer.

If we overlap them we get this...

The pink layer looks like this...

When we put the pink over the other two colours it looks like this...

The oranges are made when the pink and yellow overlap, and the seal's skin where the teal and pink overlap. There's also a dark purple layer...

When you put all the colours together, add some white details for whiskers and bubbles, and add a shadow layer to show we're underwater you get this final image...

I love using limited colours. It makes me think about colour in a more exciting way. And I love the way it looks.

Wee Puffling is out now!