I started sending queries to publishers and agents at the end of January. We’re now nearing the end of June and there hasn’t been any interest in developing my first book idea yet, so I’ve been working on the second while continuing to improve my story telling and illustration skills.

With so many ideas that I’d like to develop—and yet so much to learn—I’ve been trying to take my time and balance both processes.

On the writing side, I started by writing the outline and making the first page chart. With a different point-of-view and narration style than the first one, I feel like it’s off to a good start.

On the visual side, I’ve started taking an online character design workshop which has already taught me to look at character design and drawing in a whole new way. I don’t want to share too much about that yet but here’s a peek at a different online colour workshop I did, and some rough sketches from trying to work out some visually interesting angles and compositions.

I’ve also started experimenting with a limited palette of gauche instead of watercolour. I really enjoy the texture and vibrancy of the colours and am excited to see how this will progress!