What I’ve learned (so far) about making a picture book
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
– Arthur Ashe
Somewhere between the early sketches and the endless file exports, I realised I’m actually making a real picture book! It’s not finished yet, but I’m far enough in to pause, look around, and take a breath.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
It takes longer than you think
Even with a clear vision of what I wanted to see on each spread and (mostly) finished text, the illustration process is slow. Slower still when you’re doing it yourself, by hand, and balancing everything else at home and work. I thought I’d be colouring pages weeks ago. Instead, I spent those weeks getting feedback, refining poses, redrawing bunnies, and adjusting blankets so they looked right across a page fold. Each step adds time and and that’s okay, just a bit surprising.
You don’t have to follow the crowd
When I made the decision to go from a board book to a picture book (you can read a bit more about that in my previous post It Was a Board Book… Until It Wasn’t), I looked at a lot of other books and advice about publishing and more specific to me, self-published children's picture book.
I found that most of it didn’t fit as a lot of self-publishing advice is around novels, series of books, marketing, or even more confusing things that are only applicable to Americans or other countries when it comes to things like ISBNs, which has, again, added more time to the process to sort that all out.
For this book, Bye-Bye, Boobies, I’m not chasing a viral launch or running a Kickstarter. I’m making a quiet book, with a select trusted group of people to get honest feedback and a less standard timeline, in a way that works for me. That choice has shaped everything, from the soft colour palette to how I’m thinking about distribution later.
Letting go is part of the process
As I've talked about before, this was meant to be a board book and that means it was supposed to have a completely different format. And for a while, I tried to hold onto that idea. But the project kept growing, and eventually I let it become what it wanted to be: a full 32-page picture book with space for more emotion, more images, and what I feel like is a happy goodbye.
I have to say, it feels better now, more whole, more like a story compared to my first concept. All this also added time too, first with more writing to flesh out the story arch, then with deleting some of the sketched out scenes I had envisioned on their own, but when I tried to find the matching words they were not a great fit. Finally, having the story and the images start to click till today where I'm comfortable with estimated timeline set out.
I’m more determined than I thought
Once I committed to the format of a picture book and had the words to the story, I set a timeline to complete this book based on how long each rough sketch too me and set aside time blocks to work on it each day. So even when I’m tired, even when I don’t want to look at another sketch, even when I wonder who will read it, I have kept going. While I have applied myself in similar ways for previous work projects, I've never applied it to something so deeply personal before and this is one of those surprisingly proud feelings as I flip though the draft pages with my tea before I open my computer to work on it.
Learning new tools is part of the job
Art runs in my family. My mother’s work has hung in galleries and shows, but I’ve always just sketched for myself, mostly on paper and pretty much only in private aside from previous marketing projects for work.
Now I’m not only creating the images for this book, I’m colouring them digitally with a program called Krita. It’s open-source, and this program was completely new to me when I started looking for a program that would do what I needed. There’s been a learning curve, but it’s starting to feel like a part of my process and almost when I sit down in the morning to review my work from the day before. Now, I can say that I feel like that I am checking off a completed step box by doing a bit every morning which is helping me reach my first deadline of this coming August to order a proof copy.
I say part of the job, because I have approached it as a project the same way I have completed past projects my whole career with a project deadline and working backwards which seems to be working well so far. I had tried just doing it here and there and that often meant not doing anything at all. Now I have an hour a day dedicated to doing something on the book each day.
Sharing quietly, before it's finished
Throughout this process, I’ve been sharing early drafts and illustrations with a small circle of trusted readers. They aren’t ARC (advanced reader copy) readers. These are people I trust to give honest, thoughtful feedback while the work is still taking shape. Their insights have helped me notice what’s working, what’s missing, and where the story feels strongest. I'm so grateful to have every one of them take the time to help me in this process.
As always, thanks for following along with this project. You can visit the main site anytime at littlegoodbyes.ca. New posts land here every few weeks, depending on where I’m at with the book.
