On the second spread, Super Baby arrives to help Jesse feel better and learn his colors.

In the beginning we find Jesse in bed sick with color fever. I wanted the layout to look serious, so I drew it from above, making it more vertical. I wanted the room to be neat but very colorful, thus explaining why someone who couldn’t tell his colors apart would feel overwhelmed lying there in bed.

I found my favorite set of travel watercolors while cleaning out the garage and brought them to swim class, for my daughter’s swim lesson and my 1/2 hour live model drawing session.

Decided to spend some time today sketching Jesse. The protagonist in Super Baby, Adventures in Color.

My goal this week: start sketching at least one spread based on the new story board. I chose to start at the end and with the big picture. As I went over the story board, I took notes on objects to research ie: old trucks, cool houses, basketball courts, the coast from above. For this sketch I mostly did old truck research. Luckily living in Austin I found examples everywhere. My daughter and I found an old blue Chevrolet and she was quite upset to see me color my truck red. The other elements are from my mind. The coast is a mix of Matunuck and and Narragansett Rhode Island. The hill is more from the west coast where my husband is from. Looks like the book will be set in the land of Texarhodefornia.

In this Super Baby book the character’s go swimming. Here is this weeks swim study sketch. My daughter wanted her brown bathing suit with her new blue goggles, so it was fun to use different markers. And my friend encouraged me to go back to the beginning and sketch with pencil first. These past three weeks my daughter has started swimming her heart out.

A few coach comments that I won’t want to forget.

“She’s swimming! That was fast.” And from this weekend: ” I bet you could swim across the whole pool if you wanted. Give me a high five!”

I finished editing the text (for now). So I’ve moved on to the story board. Here it is in its roughest stage. Next goal: finished sketches of one spread.

Have I mentioned that I have a habit of rescuing animals.Our most recent edition is a cat, Mr. Lo Lo Bird.

These are from another swim class. At January’s Austin SCBWI conference, Ms. Kirby Larson, who wrote, “Hattie Big Sky” (GREAT BOOK!) mentioned something amazing, “those who take away our free time give us our inspiration.” That helped me see what was right in front of me, namely my daughter, who loves to have her picture drawn.

I need to work on my character development. Here are some sketches from my daughter’s swim lesson.