Children's Book Illustration: Part 4, Edits and Color Roughs

To continue the process of my experiences in illustrating Isaac's Ice Cream Tree (for the other posts on the process, see links at the end of this post):

Roughly a week after sending in the initial sketches for each page, I received feedback from both the author and publisher on changes they would like to see. Our publisher kindly allowed the author the greater say (something that, from what I understand, is not always the case in the children's book industry). For the most part, they were minor tweaks. Some required greater detail, such as the final page which started out very basic and became much more fleshed out. And there were even a couple pictures which I redrew entirely, with a new concept altogether.

Page 16, initial sketch

Page 16, edited sketch

My changes were all well-received, so other than a few very minor tweaks, I was done with fleshing out the pages and could move on to the color roughs--sketching out Isaac in both his spring/fall and winter clothes, the tree, color samples of all the ice cream flavors, etc. I'd tried out and discarded a couple different color combinations on Isaac before settling on blue and orange, which is what I ultimately submitted. As to the ice cream, for that I included multiple options, especially for blue and indigo, looking for feedback on which ones to go with. The color samples were easily the quickest part of the process, though between the edits and color roughs, most of the month of June was spoken for.

Spring/Fall Isaac, Winter Isaac, Tree

Ice Cream color samples and options

Process of illustrating Isaac's Ice Cream Tree
Part 1: Becoming an Illustrator (what led me submitting myself to a publisher)
Part 2: The Initial Contact
Part 3: First Round of Sketches
Part 4: Edits and Color Roughs
Part 5: Final Artwork