By now you may be wondering “but how can I do the illustration?!” or “what on earth does it work like?! I simply don’t understand a thing!”
You are right to think these things, it’s not your fault.
And so now for your benefit here is a tutorial:
1: What The Fiddle Am I Going To Draw And That
I’m basing this tutorial on one of my own pages. So that’s what we’re drawing. This is good for you because you don’t have to do anything. I have a narrative that is finished as far as I can tell, and that will have to do, and so now the first thing is to decide how to fit that onto pages. The professional, decent, proper and polite thing to do would be to storyboard the whole book as this would chuck up any continuity errors that could arise around how you design all the content or whatever. It would also do a bunch of other beneficial things. Anyway, that’s far too daunting, so I do it on a page-by-page basis and try not to worry about it. It’s not like it’s going to get published and needs a specific amount of pages or anything. Whatever.
2: Rough It Up Well Good
Do a quick sketchy sketch so you know how many boxes and how big and where and what’s going on in them: Like this!:
Looks pretty rubbish right? But it totally doesn’t even matter!
3: Do Some Proper Stuff For A Change
Now you need to plan out all the boxes on nice clean paper. Make sure you keep it clean. If it’s dirty then chuck it in the bin and then burn the bin. When you’re done this is what it should look like:
(I don’t know if you can see anything on this photo. Maybe if you click on it and look around.)
4. Good Pencil
Now it is time to start proper drawing. What you will do is proper draw everything first before putting any ink on. This is very important because you still might change your mind about stuff.
5. Get Impatient And Put The Pen On Anyway Because Your Happy With What You’ve Just Done And You’re More Scared Of Doing The Next Pencil Than You Are Of Starting To Pen.
Like so:
6. Realise That You Should Try To Do It Properly And Pencil It In Till Half Way Before Getting Bored And Impatient Again.
You did real good, you tell yourself, and I see no reason why you shouldn’t pen some more in. Nothing’s going to go wrong.
Also notice how I’m working from left to right even though I’m left handed. This is so I’m more likely to smudge everything I’m doing.
7. Finish And Then Realise There Are Perhaps Little Changes That Would Have Been Preferable But On The Whole It’s Fine Like You Thought It Would Be.
8. Do More
I went back and added some more to it. Like an unprofessional.
Well, I hope this was educational for you. It feels like it probably was very educational. Indeed.