I’ve just begun work on a new children’s book and have spent this week designing the main characters. Character design is equal parts exciting and frustrating, as I synthesize what the author has imagined with my artistic vision. Sometimes I get it right in one try. Usually, this takes a few revisions. I can’t show any of the work from my new book yet, but I thought it would be interesting to show the character design process from a previous book.

I worked on  “Eartha Gets Well” last Spring. It’s written by the husband and wife team of Kristi Falk and Dr. Daniel Falk and published by BQB publishing. This book was unusual in that an earlier form of this story had already been illustrated by a different artist. I was provided with a few samples of the other artist’s work and told to model my “Eartha” character on the original. Here is an example of the original art (and I apologize, but I don’t know the other artist’s name):

So I did a bunch of preliminary sketches (which I didn’t save) and showed two options to my editor:

I was trying to keep the same basic face shape and clothing, but adapted to my drawing style.

Neither of these were quite right, so I tried a few variations on face shape, hair style and even eyes. I’ll omit some of these versions, and skip to the three eye variations I provided, alongside her dog Cooper.

Finally, Eartha’s design was approved! I added some color, and here is here final design:

If you’d like to see Eartha in action, you can get her book “Eartha Gets Well” at this Amazon link: