Has it been a week already? Last Monday, I started the MATS Illustrating Children’s Books course and boy, has it been an inspiring week. Week one was all about creating the main character for our story. In preparation for the course we had to chose one of three stories written by the amazing Zoë Tucker and I decided to go for “Erin and the Midsummer Bear”, a beautiful story about a little girl that meets a polar bear in need.

With this post I want to let you in on my creative process during this week and show you what I came up with an how I got there. So let’s hop right in!

Designing Accessories

The week started with a mini assignment on Monday, which was for us to come up with only the accessories for our main character. Having chosen the story of Erin and the bear which is set in a Nordic environment, I dug deep into Pinterest - one of my go-to inspiration choices - and created a whole mood board. I then drew two sets of accessories in a colour palette I created from a photograph of the Lofoten Islands.

I really loved working on all those details and it was super fun to also include some pattern in the mix. After coming up with the accessories it was time to get a bit more into designing the character itself which was a tricky thing, but bear with me…

Designing the Character

I started by actually coming up with a little landscape scene, because it was hard getting in the mood and I kind of needed to know what the overall feeling would be like.

Scene of a little red house at the beach next to a tall mountain.

This actually made it way easier to get in the mood for a character design and I soon came up with a few ideas and rough sketches which led to the development of a first character. I included some interaction with the bear just to get an even better feeling for the story and an idea of the scale.

Another Version emerges

So this first version of Erin I developed was more traditional. The blond hair and toned down colours from my earlier palette gave me some Astrid Lindgren- vibes. I usually try to sit with a character for some time to get a feeling for it but in this case I was not happy with it and started drawing again very soon. Something of the sweet and traditional look did not feel right. So I came up with character version number two.

The Revelation

I liked this version much more. Her cheeky look and the messy hair but something felt still off, and while sitting at the dinner table with my family it suddenly hit me. As much as the toned down colours fit the Nordic feel of the story and the character, it is just not me. I looooooooove colours and they are a big part of my work. I also wasn’t happy about the amount of details and the smooth look of it so I sat down and started again. I tackled the landscape again to get a feeling for the style I wanted to do and then started on the character - including the bear. I chose a bold colour palette and tried to make the style a little simpler and cleaner. The landscape in particular shows more of what I like doing. I included a lot of textures and gave it a bit of a collage feeling. This style opens up the possibility to include analog textures and hand drawn pieces into the later work.

Up comes Erin #3

Now I was feeling it. The colours and the somewhat simpler shapes felt just joyful. I had to experiment with the facial features for some time, as the super big eyes did not feel super right and at one point - lightbulb moment again - I recognized them as being to close to the eyes of some of Tove Jansssons illustrations. After coming up with a basic version of Erin #3, I also added the bear and a cute little troll and thus, started the reworking process.

I started by recolouring version 2 and then reworked the character by combining the accessories and pose of version 2 Erin with the colours and facial features of version 3 Erin. I then reworked the piece with the bear until I was happy and started on a horizontal drawing of the gang as a final piece.

The imposter and the second guessing

The whole process took me about three days and I learned a lot about how my mind works in coming up with characters, details and so on. It also was a good experiencing in learning not to second guess everything and to always go with the things that bring you joy. I showed some of this work to my family and they all went with the version 2 Erin. It took me quite some time and listening to my own inside voice to land on what felt right. But in the end it was the one version which I felt initially drawn to.

The final image

I am really happy with this final version and super excited where the next weeks will take me and how Erin and the gang will develop over time. What do you think of the process? Do you have the same struggles coming up with characters and then finding the one that just is right?

Daily sketchbook routine

We also got daily sketchbook prompts in the course which really helps with getting started and in a creative flow. I use a very unspectacular Fabriano notebook which has nice smooth paper and stupidly committed to doing all the prompts with my stabilo jumbo pencils. They are quite thick and I still have to work out how to best use them. But I love the colours and the texture.