Thursday, July 12, 2007

My Illustrations

When I began the research for my first book I planned to hire an artist to do the illustrations. I quickly realized that I was probably the only person crazy enough to undertake such a huge task and any professional illustrator worth their salt would cost me a fortune. I decided to bite the bullet and go at it on my own. It took me 9 months to finish almost 3000 drawings.

Step #1 - Rough pencil sketch

Step #2 - Black and White Line Drawing

Step #3 - Full Color Rendering

It sounds easier than it is - there are actually more like 8 steps. One of the most difficult tasks is deciding on the color scheme for each design. By the time you have done about 200 or 300 color renderings you have seriously run out of new color options! I bought every set of colored pencils available on the market today (about 875 pencils) and I still ran out of colors pretty quickly.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Jackie your drawings are incredible!!! Truly you have a wonderful talent. I am in awe and can hardly wait for the release of this book. Congratulations to you!!

Unknown said...

You are too kind. I never set out to illustrate my own book. I thought I'd hire someone who knew what they were doing. But by the time I realized I was the only person crazy enough to draw and color 3000 window treatments I was hooked.