The Finish Line

Not the Finnish Line, which I'm no longer allowed to cross after what I did in Finland that one time

A couple months ago I had LeUyen Pham and Gene Luen Yang over to my house, and I showed them the convoluted process I’ve been using to illustrate my current picture book project.

I showed you this recently, too, but you don’t remember and you’re not going to click that link, so here it is again:

All my books start out as black and white sketches.

On this particular book, my next step has been to paint a rough value study—that is, a black and white painting that just concentrates on managing lights and darks.

The trick here was that I was not actually painting in black and white. I was selecting colors from this palette on the left…

…but I was forcing Photoshop to display that palette (and the painting itself) in black and white. Like a seventies television with the color knob turned all the way down.

That was a good analogy. Sometimes I worry my references are out of touch—it makes me feel like President Jimmy Carter must have felt when he lost approval over his handling of the energy crisis.

When I turn the color knob back up, so to speak, I see what I’ve actually painted:

And then I go about building up layers of paint like I normally would, doing my best to let some of those surprising colors show through and enrich the final piece.

Anyway, I showed all this to LeUyen and Gene:

Gene and LeUyen were not dressed like this when they visited. If I drew the actual clothes they were wearing, you wouldn’t believe me.

It’s a fair question! Especially since this book has ultimately been such a struggle. A lot more wrestling than I’m used to at this point in my career. A lot of moments of asking myself if what I was doing was any good at all.

Also? A lot of moments of wonder and discovery. A lot of feeling really excited about illustrating, in a way that I realized I’d been missing.

What do I want out of this job, and what should I be willing to risk? How can I put it in a way everyone will understand—I worry I’m like an 8-track cartridge that’s stuck in the dash, only capable of playing Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” again and again. It’s a solid song—should I leave it be, or risk breaking the player (and reducing the resale value of my Ford Pinto) by attempting to play something new?

None of this existential crisis was soothed by the fact that, weeks ago, I thought I was done with the book but when I put it all together it DIDN’T WORK. I assembled the supposedly finished art into a flippable pdf and it didn’t hold together. I made a ton of adjustments. Then, yesterday afternoon I finally sent the finished files—several gigabytes of them—and on the walk home from my studio I realized a new adjustment I wanted to make to eighty percent of the art. So I sent an email imploring my publisher to ignore my previous emails, and I made the adjustments, and sent it all over again. Is it done now? WHO KNOWS.

In cheerier news, I recently got my first finished copy of my next book, The Story of Gumluck and the Dragon’s Eggs.

It’s the second (albeit standalone) book in my Gumluck series, and it’s available for preorder now. Here’s a button!

Were you around last year when I kept reminding you that the first book, The Story of Gumluck the Wizard, was one of the best-reviewed kid’s books of 2023?

Now I’m neck-deep in drawing the art for book 3. Trying to make it the best I can, whilst also hoping to get it done before the school year ends and we leave on vacation.

It’s the same dilemma faced by Reynaldo in "Honolulu Rubik," the now-famous 1983 episode of the popular Saturday morning cartoon Rubik the Amazing Cube. You remember.