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!

Wee Puffling is out today!

My latest picture book, Wee Puffling, is out today! 

When all the other puffins head out to sea for the winter Wee Puffling decides to hide, and finds himself suddenly all alone.

At first life alone on the island is fun but he soon misses his friends and heads off on an adventure to find them. Here are a few of the creatures he meets along the way.

Seals!

Sea turtles!

Laid back otters

I could draw jellyfish all day

Wee Puffling is available to buy in all good bookshops. If they don't have a copy on the shelf you can just ask them to order one. Or you can buy it wherever you get your books or by clicking here.

Seas and leaves

I've been playing around with some limited colour palettes just for the fun of it.  It's an interesting challenge and I like the problem solving aspect of it.  My books are very much planned out, outlines are drawn in pencil, scanned and have to be tidied, and with so many colours to choose from it can take a lot of time to finish a page.  For these everything is created completely digitally.  I don't really plan out what I'm going to draw beforehand so I like that I get to make it up as I go.  It's a faster way for me to work.  I also never really play with pattern so that's fun too.