What are you doing in April? If you aren’t doing the A to Z Challenge yourself, please consider checking out the daily posts of those who are. Especially mine!
If you plan to do it, don’t forget to sign up. The A2Z signup starts today, and creates becomes a master list that people can use to visit you and read your posts (and hopefully comment on them). And with any luck, they’ll like what they see and become regular followers. You need to sign up on the A to Z website by 5th April. All the details are here.
My Theme – Illustrations
You saw a couple of weeks back when I did my theme reveal, that I am doing ILLUSTRATIONS.
It’s a combination of the chapter illustrations from my Princelings books, the run-through ones for the Cavies of Flexford Common, and sketches I’ve been doing recently with my art group.
I did most of my book illustrations using pencil and cartridge paper, then drawing over the lines with a pen when I was more or less satisfied with them. Then I scanned them in, cropped them, converted them to gif files for the kindle version but kept the jpgs for the other versions including the paperbacks… It took a while, but it was worth it.
When I got my iPad in about 2017, I got going with the concept of using it to sketch on, using the iPen and the Tayasui Sketches app. I’d save my illustration to ‘Photos’, and export it as a jpg or gif into the book files. Then when kindle decided to give up on mobi files, I could just create my own epub file, all formatted, straight from my illustrated manuscript. Wonderful.
I’ve since learned much more about how to use the app for better images. I learn something every time I use it. I found out last week how to get rid of the irritating shading that the supposedly white background throws up on webpages (and print files).
Here’s a taster. They’re probably among the best ones lol!
Excellent! I draw on my iPad Pro.
I’ll be sure to stop by some days. I admire you for doing the challenge.
What a great theme, Jackie, I’m looking forward to it. My life is too busy to participate but I look forward to others’ contributions!
Good to hear from you, Noelle, I was getting worried. But as long as you’re just busy, that’s fine!
Good luck with the challenge! I’ll enjoy the illustrations. So glad you figured out the white space thing at last—I remember what an issue that was with some of the books.
I think off and on about doing sketches for my posts. I look forward to seeing what you’ve done.
Hi Jemima – good luck with the A – Z … and how wonderful you’re using your ipad for illustrating. Cheers and I’ll be around to pop in – Hilary
I have been interested in Digital Drawings ever since seeing what David Hockney has done with it, I don’t have a pen-equipped pad yet but I am looking forward to seeing your works…
https://how-would-you-know.com/2025/03/a-to-z-2025-theme-reveal.html