The illustrations Laurie Caple created for "Hungry Coyote" reflect her love of nature and her appreciation of the coyote. Illustrating a picture book is a lengthy process. Laurie begins by jotting notes in the margins of a manuscript upon her first reading — she doesn’t want to forget any of her early ideas. Then she dives into research. For "Hungry Coyote," she visited a tame Wisconsin coyote to study his anatomy, habits, and movements in a more natural setting than a zoo. The result is a richly-detailed creature who invites you into his story and demands that you admire his beauty. Since the story describes a year in the life of a city coyote, Laurie scouted locations in Minneapolis. If you’re familiar with the city you'll probably recognize Theodore Wirth Park, Loring Park, and the Minneapolis skyline in the illustrations.
After doing extensive research, Laurie creates a storyboard for the book showing the cover, title page, and all the internal spreads in sequential order with notes and color codes (shown here).
After doing extensive research, Laurie creates a storyboard for the book showing the cover, title page, and all the internal spreads in sequential order with notes and color codes (shown here).
Laurie Caple's storyboard for "Hungry Coyote." When she’s satisfied that she has a compelling flow with great page turns, Laurie creates a book dummy. A book dummy is a compilation of all thirty two pages with sketches and text in place. Once the dummy has been approved by the editor and/or art director, the painting can begin. The dummy was the first sight I had of Laurie’s work. The pencil sketches were enough to give me a good impression of her vision and what a thrill to see my words finally turning into a book.
Laurie works in watercolor and pencil and each painting takes about a week to complete (not including research, photography and sketching but including creating color studies, color samples, and doing redraws). Laurie’s originals are the size of the final pages in the book. Now comes the part that would terrify me if I were an artist — Laurie packs up the paintings and ships them to the publisher. Packed in layers of bubble wrap, tape, and cardboard, those precious works of art are entrusted to the shipper — once they arrive, everyone can heave a sigh of relief. The paintings are scanned to create high-quality digital images and sent to the book designers, Mighty Media, who work their magic on layout and font choices. I loved their choice of font for the title on the cover page – it has the color and texture of snow with big bold letters! On four pages I have onomatopoeic words to describe coyote’s actions. My granddaughter enjoys following the arc of “Fwwwwoooomppp” as she says the word.
After some minor tweaking the final files are sent to the printer and a book is born.
If you're interested in Wiley, the Wisconsin coyote Laurie studied, you can read his story here and watch a video here.
Laurie works in watercolor and pencil and each painting takes about a week to complete (not including research, photography and sketching but including creating color studies, color samples, and doing redraws). Laurie’s originals are the size of the final pages in the book. Now comes the part that would terrify me if I were an artist — Laurie packs up the paintings and ships them to the publisher. Packed in layers of bubble wrap, tape, and cardboard, those precious works of art are entrusted to the shipper — once they arrive, everyone can heave a sigh of relief. The paintings are scanned to create high-quality digital images and sent to the book designers, Mighty Media, who work their magic on layout and font choices. I loved their choice of font for the title on the cover page – it has the color and texture of snow with big bold letters! On four pages I have onomatopoeic words to describe coyote’s actions. My granddaughter enjoys following the arc of “Fwwwwoooomppp” as she says the word.
After some minor tweaking the final files are sent to the printer and a book is born.
If you're interested in Wiley, the Wisconsin coyote Laurie studied, you can read his story here and watch a video here.
RSS Feed
