Chore Day, Nov. 21, 2020--Laundry, Vacuuming, and Baking

Paianted with Procreate’s sumi brush

Today’s chores were the sames as last week’s — laundry, vacuuming the house, and baking almond poppy seed cakes.

The Quest for the Right Background Image

I’m stumped, stuck in the mud, bamboozled, confounded, and bewildered. This time my befuddlement is about the background painting for the cover image. Up to this point I haven’t thought much about what a background’s function is. Like most consumers of art, I didn’t really have to think about backgrounds at all — I experienced them viscerally. But now that I have to create a meaningful background to support the message of my children’s book, and I’m getting off to a rough start. What you see here is the result of one hour’s thought. I furiously created half a dozen backgrounds and deleted them all. Out of frustration I got out a spatter brush and came of with today’s inch of progress, which hopefully will inspire tomorrow’s inch.

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Buddy wants to be family, revised

Here’s yet another version of “Buddy wants to be part of the family.” In the previous version Momma Jay looked like she came from an alternate Jaybird universe. I liked her weird new look, but she didn’t look like the Momma Jay in the rest of the book. I’m going to look at these pictures tomorrow with fresh eyes.

Buddy Wants to be "family"

I created a new version of the “buddy asks to become part of the Jay family” picture. I’m dropping the original version of the picture completely. I couldn’t make the picture fit the landscape orientation without doing way too much work. It was faster to create and new picture.

Here’s the version I won’t be using.

And here’s the new version. Momma Jay needs some attention. It’s a Work In Progress

The Best Laid Plans

Another chore day has come and is almost gone. The chore day marks the end of my week. I stop to take inventory. Did I move forward an inch a day? I make plans and sometimes the plans work. At other times, I plan and something goes astray. This was a 5 out 6 week.

Here’s yet another widened picture. Editing this picture took longer than I thought it would. I extended the roof and sky and had some trouble blending the additions. There must be some trick to adding and blending, but I’ve yet to discover it. I tried every blending mode Procreate had and still ended up with a visible seam on the roof.

Here’s another inDesign screenshot. This picture needs Buddy’s shadow on the roof…

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The Picture for the last page of my children's book

When I started this blog I made a commitment to posting something every day. I called it my “daily inch”, as in a daily inch of progress. I usually have about one hour, sometimes less, to work on my book. To give myself a push, when I started in December, 2018, I set the publishing deadline of March 31. I thought that I would be able to complete the entire 32-page book with 32 images in 120 days. But that didn’t work out. I’ve reset the publish date several times since. Today, June 26, 2019, I’m working without a deadline, which leaves me feeling like I’m drifting.

So, I’m setting a new publish date of September 1. I feel better already.

Here’s the last page of the book. I’ve widened it so that the image will provide a background for the text. This is a screenshot of the image in inDesign — the guidelines will be removed in the final version.

The Expanding Universe of My Children's Picture Book

The corny title means that I’m touching up some images and making them wide enough to fill the Kindle e-book page. Here’s a before and after shot of the inDesign page. The guidelines will, of course, be gone in the final document.

Before

After

Example image that needs fixing

I’ve mentioned many time that I created many images with faulty dimensions that don’t work well in the e-book format. The picture of the Magic Moustache Bus is a good example. When I brainstormed and drew this image, I knew I wanted a wide picture to accommodate the bye bus’ impressive length. But I didn’t even consider how it would look when squeeze into an e-book page.

If I expand the image so that it’s full length goes from the left border to the right, which I plan to do, there’s a blank gap at the top. This image needs more height, which I create by using Procreate’s surprisingly useful cloud brush.

Yet another lost picture re-inked and re-painted

The great thing about collecting all of the images and text into inDesign is that I can see which pictures are missing. When I say “missing”, I mean I can’t find them anywhere on my computer even though I processed them and posted them to this blog. I know that the did exist at one unknown time in the past.

The last time I checked there are about 1.2 million files in my home directory. I have half a dozen folders with images for this project. I have no clue what the image file is named. I’ve learned that it’s actually faster to re-do the picture than to look for it. The upside is that I believe that I’ve improved the picture. It should be improved — this is the third time I’ve repainted it. Now I have to put the picture somewhere that I can find it.

The last picture in my children's picture book

At least, I think it’s my last picture. Tomorrow I’ll be moving over to inDesign to import all of the pictures into the 32-page book template and position them with the text. I’m heaving a generous sigh of relief at completing this part of the project, and I’m looking forward to taking the next step toward getting this book published. Yea!