STRANGE CREATURES is about Walter Rothschild and the museum that he created, and the bugs, butterflies and animals that he collected, starting from when he was just 7 years old! It seems logical to begin where the process begins – with the researching and gathering of information about my subject.

Primary Sources:
Very little has been written about Walter Rothschild. The challenge to bringing this character to life was to not only record the invaluable contributions to science that he made, but to honestly capture his eccentric charm and incredible will.

As an author I love the challenge of digging up interesting sources and uncovering the facts about my subject. To learn about Walter Rothschild I was able to travel to the museum that Walter created – now called The Natural History Museum at Tring — which is about an hour northwest of London. It was a fantastic adventure to travel to England. I viewed the public collection at the museum and then was fortunate enough to get an appointment with the Museum Manager and with the Director of Education. They generously opened up the world of Walter Rothschild to me.

I stepped into the museum archives, searched through old documents, photo albums, and the extensive collection that Walter left behind. I walked along the grounds of his family home, and thought about what it must have been like to be the son of a Lord, heir to a banking empire, but more interested in bugs, butterflies and the natural world.

(The two pictures above are of the Natural History Museum at Tring and the present day grounds around the former Rothschild Estate at Tring, which is now a school.)

Walter’s life was a contradiction of privilege and wealth alongside an overbearing amount of expectation that was placed on his young shoulders. And though few are alive who remembered Walter, I was even fortunate enough to speak to people who remembered family stories about him. These direct sources were invaluable in creating a story of the life of this complicated character. And since I’m also the illustrator, everything I learned and saw also went into the pictures in the book.

One of the challenges I enjoyed about this book was capturing the immense difference in size between baby dinosaurs and their parents. I started the illustration process by sketching loose thumbnail sketches, exploring different compositions to convey the scale of dinosaurs.

Then I began refining these ideas into detailed drawings and final art.

Throughout the sketch process, I try to keep ideas fluid. In this case, I thought an aerial view of a parent next to 5 school buses would show the immense size of a mother Argentinosaurus. But I thought there might be even a better to way to show her scale. Then I calculated that a parent weighed as much as 17 elephants. I love drawing elephants, and thought the idea was better than the first.

Originally I sketched backgrounds around the dinosaurs. But the thing I wanted to emphasize the most with each illustration was life-like gestures of the dinosaurs. My editor, Deirdre, and my art director, Danica, suggested I try a white background around the art. I loved it!

The negative space also helped tie the layout of the book together. The book has a pattern of 2-page spreads. The first offers clues (or facts) that scientists have discovered. The second is a full spread conveying educated guesses about how baby dinosaurs and their parents behaved. Combining all these details worked with this layout.

I loved creating illustrations that demonstrated how dinosaurs must have behaved like animals alive today. The challenge was to tie illustrations of living animals with dinosaurs and show their similarities.

I chose poses that were reminiscent of things we’ve seen in the animal world. For example, a dinosaur nest seen from above, as if you were looking down into a bird’s nest.

The cover – that’s always the most fun! Here are just a few of the thumbnail sketches I drew to explore how to create it.

More sketches are here and more illustrations are here.

Here is a short series, sketches to final art, of five figures (including the dogs) who appear in “Pennies for Elephants.”

The role of the husband and wife, the “Snooty Couple”, is to ignore the little paper boy. Their gestures and clothes wordlessly portray people who aren’t interested in what the little boy is saying. Even their dog can’t be bothered to notice the paper boy’s dog. These characters add some humor. And even though they have no dialog, they convey meaning just by their attitude.

I started as I always do by gathering reference. I found an elephant named Dinde, and her trainer was happy to work with me. Dinde did tricks and took poses that I needed for the book.

And since the characters in my book got to ride elephants… so did I! That’s the best part of creating my characters – immersing myself into the role so I can bring life to my sketches.

After working with Dinde, I was ready to begin sketching. I did hundreds, searching for the proper style to fit the children in the book and finding enough expression in the elephants faces to bring them to life. The sketches often start very crude and simple, then slowly build in character and detail.

Once sketches are done and I have found the style that works, I am ready to begin painting!

The first character is a little girl named Dorothy in my book Pennies for Elephants (due out next spring). The book is set in Boston 1914. I wanted to create a sense of nostalgia with the book and with the characters. I also wanted it to be a younger story, not as realistic as One Thousand Tracings — that meant developing a new style for depicting my figure work. I find it’s actually easier when I do work that’s realistic, because I just hire a model and paint what I see, but for this book I worked to develop a style which captured the proper mood and period of the book.

I began by looking at examples of illustrators from the early 1900′s to immerse myself in the period. I also looked through clothing catalogs to see what people wore.

Then I drew lots of sketches! Hundreds of drawings of children. My style swung from too representational to overly cartoony. I experimented with putting different types of clothes on my characters, and used different gestures to create the personality I wanted. At last, I started focusing on the look of my character.

But the work wasn’t done. Translating a pencil drawing into a painting is often the most difficult step for me. There are still decisions to be made in the final paintings that the pencil drawing doesn’t cover. How could I paint my character to capture the flavor of fun and nostalgic early 1900′s. I did a series of color studies, experimenting with different colors to capture the right mood. I also experimented with different qualities of line and paint to find the right balance of emphasizing the getup of my little girl through line, but softening the look so the art felt warm and inviting. I did all these steps before the manuscript was even complete. Because I’m so visual, I often need to get my character down on paper as an illustration before I can complete the writing. After I ‘m happy with the look and personality of my character in the illustration, I can move toward finishing the story.