Revisions, revisions, revisions! It has been a year since I worked on Ollie And Logger In The Deep Blue Sea, the early reader book that I illustrated (and my mother wrote) for my first semester senior project. I love the story and feel good about the pacing of the sketches as a whole. But as I look back, I was deeply dissatisfied with a couple of things. The characters seemed awkward, stiff and bloated, their faces falling short of the natural cuteness I was going for. And on top of that, all the color work I did wasn’t working either. Try as I might last fall, I was not getting the lightness and fluidity of underwater scenes, and all the pieces look overworked. That’s the hardest part about watercolor – knowing when to stop, because once you go too far there is no going back, just starting over.
Despite my self-criticisms, I am confident that we have something marketable with Ollie And Logger – it’s just a matter of revising. So I spent my three-day weekend reworking the characters and the first color piece . . . and here are the results of the makeover!
Walking In Public 