You’ve illustrated two books for Peter and Connie Roop for Penobscot Books. How did you decide on the style for Maine Lighthouse ABC?

The style for the illustrations in the lighthouse book were inspired by the lighthouses themselves. Lighthouses are made up of distinctive shapes and building materials while being located in some of the most scenic locations, and I wanted the illustrations to reflect this. The goal was to have bold line drawings with bright colors that would appeal to children while also showing the variety of locations and lighthouses. For the technique, I used a refined version of the process that I use for illustrating comic books because it was a process I was familiar with and I was able to produce the drawings on a deadline that way.

When it came to Maine Lobster ABC, how was the process different?

For the lobster ABC book, the focus was more on organic shapes of lobsters and the people working in the lobstering industry, so I wanted the artwork to reflect that instead of the rigid structures of the lighthouses. But since this book was meant to be a companion to the lighthouse book, I also wanted them to go well together. For the lobster book, I introduced colored lines and more levels of shading to add more depth. I also expanded the color palette using photo references to showcase a wide variety of scenes and settings from the underwater scenes, to the scenes on the ocean, to a dinner plate.

Another emphasis that I wanted to have with this book was that it was more about people and how they catch, process and eat lobsters and not just about the lobsters themselves. In both books I worked to make sure that children were represented so that they could identify more with the illustrations. Since a lot of children in this area have family members in the lobster industry, I wanted to represent those children as well and how they might help their parents or even play dress up in their parent’s gear.

A lot of the work for these illustrations is done on a computer. What is the process to produce a drawing for these books?

All of my illustrations start out the old-fashioned way as pencil drawings on paper. At this point they are rough sketches that get worked with various pencil types until I am happy with the drawing, which sometimes takes a few tries. Next I use tracing paper and fine point graphic design pens and draw my outlines. For the color lines, I used a number of bold colors that would stand out and which were later substituted for the final colors on the computer. The ink outlines are then scanned and cleaned up in Photoshop. Before I color them, I place them on the page to make sure the drawing will work with the words properly and I make any adjustments to the line art as needed.

Once my line art is cleaned up and finalized, I then open the files in Illustrator where they are converted to clean vector lines. Next I color in the solid areas between the lines with digital colors and place them on the pages. For some of the images I extracted the colors from photographs to make my palette so there would be more variety and unique colors. There were also some illustrations that required multiple layers. For the lobster trap in K is for Kitchen there were actually five separate pieces that I drew that were then layered over each other on the computer so that it would show the various parts of the lobster trap.

Read a conversation with Peter and Connie Roop, the authors of both ABC books here.