JITTERY JENNY

by Jamie Sussel Turner (Author),
Madonna Davidoff (Illustrator)

Publication date: October 12, 2021
Published by: Less Stress Publishing

Jittery Jenny is a picture book about Jenny, a 2nd grader who worries about almost everything. At school, she is often bullied, teased and the kids call out “Jittery Jenny” when she's near. She wants to be calm and relaxed but doesn’t know how. But, thanks to her loving grandfather’s advice, Jenny found the perfect solution to conquering her fear and anxiety.

MY ILLUSTRATION PROCESS:

RESEARCH:

My favorite part of the illustration process is researching for references, seeking inspiration for my color palette, and investigating different styles & techniques. I often leverage Pinterest, Instagram, and Google for ideas. I then create a “mood” board in Pinterest that I can refer to during the process. I also researched what the main character (Jenny) would look like. While researching, I sketched using some images from my references. Below some samples of my sketches done in pencil:

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT:

Here are some samples of my character development process:

THUMBNAIL SKETCHES:

When all the character studies were approved, I then proceeded to make the Storyboard, starting with some very rough thumbnail sketches below:

STORYBOARD:

A storyboard is where you visually narrate a layout for all the pages of a picture book. In my case, I had to create a 32 page storyboard. The editor broke down the text of the manuscript into 32 pages and I used that as a guide making sure there is enough space in the pages to insert the text that will be inserted by the art director.

ROUGH SKETCHES:

After the storyboard was approved I then started the rough sketches. I initially did black & white pencil renderings of the pages. I've included below some samples of my rough sketches. I move from manually drawing, scanning in Photoshop and then finishing the sketch using the pencil tool in ProCreate to do these sketches.

Once the rough sketches were approved, I then proceeded to finalize the sketches. I submitted the final sketches and below are some samples - from rough to final sketch:

COLOR STUDIES:

Once the rough sketches were approved, I then proceeded to finalize the sketches & start the color study. Coloring is the most time consuming but in my opinion, the most exciting part of the illustration process.
I had to work closely with the Art director on multiple revisions until the colors were finally approved.

Here’s some color study samples from rough to finish.