This week I worked on coloring my characters for This Tree is for Me. The original idea was to use patterns from nature to bring the characters to life. I stuck to the plan. Taking the line drawings I produced, I added in color and texture as a test. The following is the result:
Purple Fish Textures Test
Orange Monkey Textures Test
While the textures turned out OK, something was missing. I tried natural textures, manmade textures, geometric textures, etc. but nothing seemed to fit just right. After struggling, I realized why. The lines didn’t want a texture. They were too playful and loose to support them. In the end, Orange Monkey just didn’t look Orange Monkeyish enough and Purple Fish? Well, he was a bit Fishy. I was about to give up when on a whim I applied the same color style as I used in Moo-Pig and in many illustrations on this site. Both Monkey and Fish loved them. I enjoy this technique it shows in my work when I use it. Here is the sketch I came up with:
Orange Monkey and Purple Fish in Colorfulticity.
This works much better. I still plan to implement the textures into the illustrations, but they will be used in the setting. This is a curveball in my plan of attack on the book, but I always follow the illustrations where they may go. It’s always important to me to listen to the story, to the characters, and give them what they need to be successful.
