Making A Picture Book In A Month
Let me start by saying, I didn’t set out to make a picture book in a month. I just got a bit carried away. And I wouldn’t necessarily recommend doing the same. But after a month of drawing, drawing, drawing, tweaking, refining and way too many late nights, to have the finished book in my hand and to see little ones reading it has been such an amazing feeling.
First question, why would I even try to do such a thing? Picture books need a great level of time and attention and I don’t support the idea of rushing creativity or putting yourself under unnecessary stress. But… the thing is, I love a project. And one of the projects I particularly love is the illustration challenge #illo_advent. Dreamt up by fabulous illustrator Penny Neville-Lee, the idea is to draw a Christmassy illustration a day for the duration of advent and to post them on social media with the hashtag. I’ve been taking part for the last seven years and it’s always an amazing way to practice drawing.
I usually come up with a theme to help me with ideas for 24 images. This year, I decided to draw one of my favourite things to illustrate, animals in jumpers. The truth is I usually spend a lot of December drawing most evenings, trying to keep up with producing a picture a day. This year, I decided to get ahead and planned to start drawing by mid-November. While chatting to a good friend of mine about the project, she suggested that perhaps I could corral my animals into a Christmassy alphabet. It would only mean two additional pictures and it would give me even more focus regarding what to draw. And so I started sketching. And I started thinking… The alphabet element reminded me of my book An Amazing Alphabet of Cake. Could this festive foray be another book?
While I was thinking, I began drawing each new picture at a resolution of 300 dpi just in case. I changed my canvas size to 8.5” x 11” (plus a little bit extra which I’ll explain later!), the same size as both of my previous picture books, just in case. And after a few days, I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist trying to turn the pictures into a book. And to try doing it in time for Christmas. It was already mid November. But by a strange twist of fate, I had lost my voice completely that week, which meant I couldn’t do my usual day job so I found myself hiding out on the sofa under a blanket with time to draw. I calculated that if I was going to have a chance of doing this, I needed to draw at least two finished illustrations a day. Doable, right?
Well, yes, until you add in life and trying to fit drawing around various commitments and responsibilities. But, two things, I am very used to fitting my creativity around life. AND drawing uses a certain part of my mind that I find so meditative. It’s a pleasure. It’s something I do while I relax. Something I do to relax. On that note, I started using an iPad and Procreate to draw last year and I can honestly say, it’s an absolute gamechanger. It’s so easy to use. The built in brushes are brilliant and it feels freeing and so much closer to old school sketching than sitting at a computer. I can draw in my downtime, on the sofa, under a blanket, while watching Christmas movies. Thinking all this, I was encouraged and ready to take on the challenge.
But I still didn’t tell anyone. Just in case. I just kept drawing. On my sofa. In cafes. I. Just. Kept. Drawing.
December 1st arrived and I had drawn about 18 of the illustrations. Compared to previous #illo_advent challenges, I couldn’t believe it. I usually have about three ready by then. But still, it wasn’t quite where I’d planned to be. I kept drawing. Seeing animals in jumpers in my sleep. Drawing every day was making it easier. I became really comfortable in my process within Procreate. I’ve outlined this below in case it’s helpful. You may well prefer different brushes or wish to create a different sized book but this is the routine I got into.
I created a template canvas for an 8.5” x 11” book. It’s important to add an additional 3mm to each side of your canvas to allow for a ‘bleed’ on each edge where the paper will be trimmed by the printer. When you draw, you should also allow 3mm inside the edge of your canvas as a ‘safe space’ where your illustration isn’t vital. Again, this allows for a little movement when the pages are being trimmed. Amazon KDP has a really useful help page that explains the set up for your pages and book cover.
On the advice of other illustrators I used an RGB colour profile in Procreate to get the colours to work as I wanted them to. I then modified each page into CMYK in Photoshop ready for print.
I sketched a basic idea of each illustration using the 6B sketching pencil.
I then added the first layers, e.g. the body of the character I was drawing, using the Oberon drawing brush. I used LOTS of layers so things could be tweaked and revisited easily! As a side note, I don’t bother to name my layers any more. I used to be meticulous about this but for this project in particular, I needed to be FAST!
I added details using a smaller sized Oberon brush or the inking Studio Pen and then added a little shading with Oberon and some outlines in a darker shade with the 6B sketching pencil. For this particular project, I created a basic design for the jumpers and generally stuck to this throughout (e.g. the lines on the cuffs and collars) which sped things up a bit.
I created a Stack in Procreate for all of my images and gave them file names starting with 01, 02, 03, etc to make them easy to catalogue.
Once each image was ready, I shared a PSD file with my Dropbox so that I could pick the files up on my laptop.
I should say, at this point, there’s more than one way to create a book using Procreate. But this was the best way I could think of at the time to keep my momentum going and to create the book with skills I’d already acquired, to be able to hit my own ridiculous deadline!
Meanwhile, I needed to set up the book template on my laptop, where I would collate the images into a PDF file for print. I planned to use the same layout and font that I had for my book An Amazing Alphabet of Cake. I usually work with a brilliant book designer, Sarah but she was super busy. (I usually book her time well in advance and this was all a bit spontaneous!). Sarah uses Adobe InDesign but it’s a mystery to me. I had a little experience of setting up book printing files when I made the Hug book last year so I figured maybe I could create this book in the same way. This would mean saving each page as a Photoshop PDF and collating them using Adobe Acrobat. I figured there must be a quicker way. So late one night, I found myself watching endless YouTube videos about indie publishing picture books.
I stumbled across a really helpful video about using art boards in Photoshop so that you can see your whole book layout in one file, like a storyboard. I set up my Photoshop file in the way the video described, ensuring I was using a CMYK colour profile for print. I found it so helpful for this particular book as the pages needed to have the same layout - the image, the letter of the alphabet in upper and lower case in the corner in the same font throughout and some words to describe each of the animals, again in the same font throughout. I duplicated the artboard template for each page and copied the illustrations across from my Procreate files for each letter. A time consuming but satisfying task.
I also drew some end papers based on the designs on the jumpers and added a title page and copyright page based on my previous books.
As an additional note, it’s important to ensure you have a licence for the font you are using. I buy my fonts from the appropriately named My Fonts site. They have a Licensing page where you can find out which license you need.
Next! The cover. You can check the template dimensions that you will need on the Amazon KDP help pages. I was able to create mine using the cover template that I already had for my previous picture books. I played with the position of the title and re-used images from the pages until I felt happy with the layout. I also wrote some brief wording for the back of the book, that I could also use for the book description on KDP. I like using alliteration and keeping my blurb quite short. Here’s what I came up with.
A brilliant badger in a bobble hat, surrounded by bells and baubles. Proud penguins perched on presents putting up paper chains. A kind kangaroo carrying Christmassy koalas. Snuggle up with this cosy alphabet of Christmas characters and see how many things you can spot beginning with each letter!
I put the cover to one side for a couple of days while I continued tinkering with the pages. This allowed me to look at it again with fresh eyes. I also shared it with a couple of close friends to get some immediate first impressions.
By now, I was sharing my alphabet images each day on social media as part of #illo_advent. Obviously, this isn’t a usual part of making a picture book but it was super helpful under the circumstances as I was getting live feedback from friends about the illustrations which gave me a bit of confidence that the book may be good enough quality to share. Interestingly, working so quickly also became helpful as it didn’t give me any time to overthink.
By now it was 9 December. The pages were ready. The cover was ready. I saved both as printable PDFs. And took a deep breath. I planned to initially sell the book via KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) on Amazon for speed. I already have KDP set up due to my other books. It’s a relatively simple process, but if you are publishing for the first time, I would say it’s a good idea to allow yourself some time to work through the steps while not under pressure!
At this point, I have to confess that I had a very stressful 24 hours trying to upload the book for print. I saved the PDF at maximum resolution as I wanted to make sure the images printed clearly. And… it just wouldn’t upload. The file was over 300mb and I couldn’t figure out why it was so massive. I’m completely self-taught so am always very much feeling my way. I persevered. I spent a long time on the chat facility with the help desk at KDP and it seemed that the file was simply timing out. These kind of things have happened to me many times before. But I’ve learnt that they are simply obstacles to overcome. To publish independently, I find you have to be so tenacious and have to not be put off by challenges. You’re often cast in every role. The writer, the illustrator, the designer, the tech nerd, the problem-solver, the copywriter, the marketing team, the sales person. The project was already very much to the wire but I couldn’t give up.
So I Googled, with slightly wild eyes by this point! The only solution I could find was to save the file as a different version of PDF. So I tried and the file size miraculously reduced to 15mb. On screen, the quality hardly looked any different. I was concerned but I really wanted to try to share the book for Christmas. So I took a chance, uploaded the file and requested a proof copy. And then I waited.
It took a couple of days to receive my proof copy from Amazon. The second it arrived, I flicked eagerly through the pages. I was so relieved and pleased to see that the quality looked great. I confess, if I hadn’t been working to the template of my cake ABC, I don’t think I would’ve been able create the book in this timescale. And thankfully, the very nature of the book meant that the animal illustrations didn’t need detailed backgrounds which helped in terms of speed when drawing them.
Happy with the proof, I clicked the button to PUBLISH! It takes a short while for books to actually be available online as they need to be reviewed by the KDP team. I finally received the email from them on 14 December. With 11 days until Christmas, my book was LIVE and available for everyone to buy - and more importantly, for little ones to read!
I’ll say again, I wouldn’t necessarily advise trying to make a picture book in a month. It was a pretty intense experience to say the least! But a great challenge. I’m really pleased with the result and it feels good to have added another book to my little collection. I’ve already had some lovely feedback from little ones who have enjoyed it over Christmas - which, for me, really is why I do what I do.
A little after Christmas, I also managed to add the book to Lulu. The finish is a little different and the price a little higher but I’m really pleased to be able to offer an alternative to Amazon.
