Behind the Scenes of Marvelous Mabel: Day 4!

BEHIND THE SCENES OF MARVELOUS MABEL! Day four! Since I shared the most difficult illustration yesterday, I figured I should share my most favorite illustration today. (I specifically didn’t do “easiest” because none of the illustrations were easy. Some took less time than others, some are smaller in size than others… that’s about it.)

My most favorite illustration was of Mabel practicing in her room. You can see that in my original version, she had a Gay Blades poster in her room and everything could be seen clearly.

Dave and Jess let me know that Mabel had to be the focus of the image, so they suggested a few things like fading the bed into the background, adding more sunlight, possibly adding dust motes/stars and removing the shadow from her face. They were all really great suggestions, so I added them all in along with some suggested adjustments to Mabel’s hand.

My favorite part was adding the light filtering into Mabel’s room. I loved making sure the light and shadow on her mini rink was realistic enough to feel right. The little dust motes and sparkles were fun to draw too. I was really happy with how it turned out.

Fun fact: this illustration isn’t actually in the inside of the book, it’s on the back of the book jacket. I made it as a cover option. There’s a spread within the book that’s a lot like this illustration, and in my opinion the interior version is a little better, but you have to wait until you read the book to see it! Tomorrow’s the big day!!