Mermaid For Each Other

cover process and studio news!

Happy December, Friends! 

I am thrilled to share my latest baby board book project, 'Mermaid For Each Other,' which will be released on December 5, 2023. Hannah Eliot wrote the text, and it's the second in the series I have been illustrating for Little Simon. You can preorder the book through my affiliate link on Bookshop.org or purchase it from your favorite bookstore. Preordering is a brilliant way to support your favorite writer and illustrator! 

Here's a peek at the book cover, which was my first task when I received the manuscript in August 2022: 

I instantly fell in love with the title, as I am fond of puns and enjoy working on baby board books. Since the book features cute sea creatures, I was even more excited to start the project. To begin, I sketched 12 different cover ideas to share with the publisher, keeping in mind that they wanted a mermaid, possibly a big and little mermaid, and maybe a sea creature or two. Here are my sketches: 

You may be wondering why I created so many cover sketches? Because some of these ideas get used in the interior spreads of the book. Doing more sketches at the beginning makes the rest of the sketching process more straightforward for me. Unfortunately, the otters didn't make the cut this time, but I hope they'll appear in a future project. 

After receiving feedback, they decided to go with sketch #4 with a combination of the mermaids in #3 and moved forward with color roughs. Since the book is a Valentine's book, I stuck with Valentine's color palettes. My heart leaned towards #6.

You can see a few things changed along the way, but I love sharing process posts because it is interesting how a project starts and ends. I hope you enjoyed seeing my approach to the cover development. These books mean everything to me, and I love working on them. Thank you to Laura Roode for working with me again and to my agent, Alex.

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Playtime Picks: 

*I watched Dylan's Bullet Journaling: Life Management For Creatives Skillshare class and was suddenly inspired to start Bullet Journaling, or BuJu, as the cool kids call it. I went down the rabbit hole of buying supplies and looking at BuJu pages on Instagram. You can check out some inspiring pages here and here. Wish me luck as I start this endeavor. Either I'm going to bullet journal for one month or become the world's most productive and organized person. 

*I did not join in on any October prompts or Folktale week, but I'm eyeing #TheImaginedBookCover2023. If I want to join, I better start sketching ideas out now, but I'm not making any promises.

*I've been reading Diary related books because I have a super secret newsletter project I've been working on. I'm not going to share too much yet, but it's something that I've had on my mind for a while now, and it is slowly coming to fruition. Tell me, do you keep a diary? 

*Have you attended any of the artist talks through Orange Beak Studio? Recently, they had Julie Morstad, and it was one of the most illuminating and inspiring artist presentations I've seen. Julie's work is incredible, but hearing about all the different types of artists that inspire her work and seeing how she plays with materials felt like a magical moment that lit up something inside me. I'm inspired to play more with various mediums in my sketchbook. I've also signed up to hear Catia Chien's talk on December 7. 

*And to play more this next year, I've treated myself to a paid membership newsletter called 'Introvert Drawing Club' with Beth Spencer through her Substack. 

I hope you have a delightful December, and I'll see you in 2024! Thank you for being in this space with me and for supporting my work this past year.

-Denise