Behind the Scenes: The Faerie Queene - Book One

Today I have a preview post for you about our upcoming book project, THE FAERIE QUEENE. This project is a commission for Oasis Family Media and will feature 72 illustrations, all of which will be rendered in pencil, but many of which will likely be taken to full color as well. Along the way I will be sharing the development work from the project along with the finished work as it is completed. 

So far we concepted out the first 12 cantos of the book and begun to make our way through all of the drawings.

When I begin a large project like this, I like to try and get all of the ideas down on paper first as little sketches. Even if they are just generic little scribbles like the sketchbook pages above, they really help me get a better grasp of the flow of the book. When I have all of them together on the page, I can better sort out where the highs and lows are, as well as making sure we are really capturing all of the major themes and characters into the art.  I did a LOT of these little sketches (this is only about 1/10th of them!).  The book itself has SO many good scenes in it, really powerful and emotional, (along with of course, some incredible monsters), so it was tough to figure out what to take out and what to leave in.  

After working with the client on which images fit best with the text, we narrowed down the main ones that we would tackle for the book. Sadly, this does mean that a lot of the sketches just don't make the cut, and will be left behind. Early on in my career the idea of having to leave behind ideas I was really excited about was really distressing, but I got used to just saving them, and now it doesn't worry me as much. If a sketch is good, and inspires me, I can always paint it later on my own time! 

Once we narrow down the sketches to the core images that will be part of the book, I then create some clean-line sketches for each image. 

The line drawings have become a very important stage in my work. I always find that I produce much better work in general if I do something very clean before moving on to the more involved drawing and painting stages. Equally important, they also help when collaborating with others on a project, as my little scribbly sketches may not be enough to really communicate my ideas effectively. Sketches which are very rough can leave a lot of room for misunderstandings, and this can lead to lots of hard corrections later on. I have found doing these clean line sketches really help keep the project and the images progressing more smoothly. 

I will be sharing a great deal of the art here on Patreon. If you'd like to watch the images develop live, I will be live-streaming many of them on Twitch over the coming months. On tomorrow's stream we will be working on the battle with the Giant Orgoglio (shown below).

I hope you've enjoyed this little preview. You can expect to see a lot of work from this series in the coming months here on the Patreon. I am very excited about it and can't wait to share it with you.  Our next Behind-the-Scenes post we will share some tips on reference hunting and usage for larger projects like this!