Colby Sharp, Judy Blume and Green Kangaroos

Above: I love teacher Colby Sharp's enthusiasm for reading and how he shares it with his students. "READING IS AWESOME!"

Thanks to Colby for letting me use his classroom as photo reference for some of the illustrations I did for the Judy Blume chapter books. He and my teacher friend Allison Durno were kind enough to share reference photos with me during the process.

Here's how my illustration for pg 7 of THE ONE IN THE MIDDLE IS THE GREEN KANGAROO (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster, 2014) began:

Then it became this:

Then I referred to a couple of stills from a short video that Colby sent me:

Video still courtesy Colby Sharp, reposted with permission.Video still courtesy Colby Sharp, reposted with permission.

and the illustration became this:

Then Simon & Schuster art director Lauren Rille worked her magic and here's the final page layout:

In thanks for the photo ref, I put Colby in the auditorium crowd near the end of the book:

So fun!

Anyway, do check out Colby's SharpRead blog and the Nerdy Book Club, which he co-founded.

Read more about how Simon & Schuster's Lauren Rille and I created a new look for Judy Blume classics at the Nerdy Book Club.

To find out more about the Judy Blume books I illustrated, see my Illustrating Judy Blume page. I'll also be talking about the process during a panel discussion at the INSPIRE! Toronto Book Fair on Sunday, November 16th on the Spark Stage at 1 pm.

Comments

[Dana Murphy]

What a cool look into your illustration process! This is fascinating, and I know kids will love it, too!

Also, that picture of Colby is spot-on. :)

[:Donna Marie]

I totally got a kick out of this, Debbie :) It's so funny how, until we have reference art, we often forget the many details we know (in the back of our minds) that are there! Yay for you and Colby :)

[แทงบอลออนไลน์]

Thanks for your information A good article and interesting.