Picture Book Spread

A spread from a fictional children’s picture book about two best friends that love to listen to music every day after school. Kyle’s dog Gus liked to do his best to sing along and the boys think it’s the funniest thing ever!

From the initial sketch (below, left), I wanted to make the scene a little more dynamic. So, I changed the perspective and placed the scene inside a vignette. I also reworked the boys expression to show how funny they think it is that the dog’s howling along to the music.

After the color version above, I thought there were some issues with the vignette and how it interacts with the dog and how the bird in the window was intersecting with the text. So, I re-illustrated as a spread to fix those problems and show more of the boys’ room – which was something I liked from the first sketch.

(I also couldn’t resist adding more records to work in some more of my favorite artist and albums like the Beatles, Avett Brothers, Needtobreathe and the Hamilton soundtrack!)