initial sketch of a photo to put on the first page or two of my children’s book on love.

I thought I was done with the illustrations for my first children’s book How to Love Like Jesus: A Guide for Children and Their Parents, but as I was formatting the manuscript to send off to self-publishing company that designs layouts, I realized I still had a few extra that I added in last minute in order to keep consistent with having an illustration for each section of the book.

This process takes a while! First I draw the pictures in black ink, then I have to scan them, then I need to import them into Adobe Photoshop. From there I have to color them and add necessary changes.

what the scan looks like at first in Photoshop

Once I get my groove going, I can get a few done in a day. I was able to scan and digitally color almost all of the illustrations for this first book in two working days. But now I’ve got these 4 extra. Whaaaa!

No really, I enjoy coloring them. Its just that I’m so excited about getting a quote and a dummy copy out to have my friends’ kids preview, I don’t want to wait.

But patience. I need patience. Which is actually a form of love according to the bible and of which I talk about in the book. If I am going to love this book, I need to love it. Not rush through just to get it done. And I imagine if I want my readers to love the book, they’d appreciate the details.

What it begins to look like as I color them.

With just 2 weeks left of summer vacation, I am realizing, I should have allocated the entire summer to working on these books, not just the month of July. Looks like I will be continuing to work on them through the school year. But hey–if I can get just one children’s book out there and test it out on Amazon and work on developing my marketing skills through that one, maybe by the time I get the other 4 finished, I will be a pro with a big enough following. 🙂 We shall see what God has planned. 🙂