Catch of the Night Process Work

Here is some of the process work I did to get to the final illustrations for "Catch of the Night."

These are some images I collected for ideas of Frank. For Frank I was thinking of him being a mixture of an old fisherman and Mr. sandman.

These are some of the images I collected for Franks House. I wanted his house to be impossible tall since his profession was fishing in the sky. I also wanted it to feel tall and isolated like a lighthouse. 

For the stars I wanted them like everything else to feel somewhat aquatic. So I looked at a lot of fish. Then I landed on betta fish because there fins felt almost flame like. They are stars after all. 

Before I got started doing any of this I wanted to search around for pieces of artwork for any ideas I hadn't already thought of. These are some pictures I collected. Starry night was always in mind. 

Author and Illustrator David Small once said that the best picture books are the ones that tell the story through images and the words aren't necessary. I dont know if I have completely accomplished that goal but its my first draft. I started planning the illustrations by stanza and I wrote down what moments I thought were crucial. I wrote, wrote and re wrote. I wont bore you with every little note but heres a few. 

So here is a jumble of design tests I made. Sometimes you just need to see something to know its not going to work. Often it spurs better ideas. 

From the beginning I had this idea of inverting my line but in the amount of time I had I couldn't figure out how I wanted to do it. One of my main changes I think I will make to my story this summer is incorporating that. For now I tried to accomplish that idea with keeping a simple color palette with two contrasting colors, blue and yellow representing night and day. 

Lastly this is the font I was basing my writing on.