Inside the Illustration

Spread 7: Feather

This page was modeled from a real life experience. After having a c-section with my son, I was in the hospital and feeling sad that my mom could not meet him. When the doctor brought me the baby, a feather floated in and landed right next to us. Was it from a pillow? Probably. But I like to think that it was my mom letting me know she was there. 

If you watch the video of this illustration you will see that there were initially cabinets behind the bed. However, to allow room for the copy to be added later, I had to remove them during post-processing. I was able to use the bed/pillow from the ladybug page as a template for this one, which made that part go pretty fast. I was not initially sure I wanted to include the doctor, but I am happy that I did. 

I did the initial line drawing with a graphite pencil on white paper. I colored in the drawing with colored pencil, blended slightly with a Q-tip, and finally outlined with a Sharpie fine tip marker. The vertical lines that are present are from the texture of the paper. I scanned the illustration, did a little photoshop / post-processing work, and finally formatted bleeds and copy in Adobe illustrator. 

Hardest part: The IV cart

Easiest part: Bed/pillow because I used the ladybug page as a model

Favorite part: Patient’s shocked expression