For those who does not follow my updates on Substack, here is my latest post.
It’s been a few months now that I am deeply focused on my new book series and I am very productive – and I hope I will keep the rhythm!
All my process and news are uploaded on my Patreon channel :
To give you a short insight, I published 2 decades ago 2 books : À La Recherche de Féerie (French only) and it was co-illustrated with Erlé Ferronnière and written by Patrick Jézéquel.
These books are no longer available for quite a while now and this is quite sad because I did a great job on the layout at this time and illustrated a huge part of them.
These books made their way all over the planet even if they were in French and many big studios have them in their library, which is fantastic!
I don’t why I waited so long to make something new from them but as Erlé already used his pictures from these books to make other books, I guess, I can do it too.
During my 13 years in Canada and since my return in France, I made a lot of new illustrations and so far I never publish them in a book of tales… and these pictures deserve a story God dammit! ^^
On July, I really started to think about it so Margo and I just printed thumbnails of my old pictures (from 2 books) and my new orphan ones. We made 2 boards from that to create the rough idea and … just to make it real!
I thought first to make once again 2 books but I added so many new pictures that each book will have more double pages than showed on the photo and in the end I think there will be minimum 4 books.
For the majority of the oldies I am reworking them. My skills of my young age (30s) were limited and in 2 decades, my style and envy have changed. Therefore, to match my nowadays style and my new pictures, they need a little lifting.
Several times a month on my Patreon, I share on what I worked with screenshots and insights and time after time, it seems that I am still adding new illustrations on my book project.
This month for instance, my Patreon followers have been able to enjoy several new processes :
- My new Befana witch – a lifting from my very first book Halloween (also co-illustrated with Erlé Ferronnière – and yes! I will also using my illustrations from this book as it is also sold out for so long!!)
- My Japanese Yokai
- A Wild Hunter on a boar
- A Pumpkin lifting from one of my first illustrated work
- Some new Goblins of course 🙂
This is just the tip of the iceberg! There are so many ones!
The first book is very close to be complete – visually talking.
This was my easy part because there is still a lot of to do. Beside the stories that will be a big job, I have to find a new layout that I enjoy, think about the cover, filling more each double pages because I hate pages that seem empty!
Send me luck my Friends with this new big project! And if you feel to watch over my shoulder, to share a piece of moment in my studio, take the “Mongian Brotherhood” subscription on my Patreon channel! This level is now the only one and you have access to everything! Your likes, comments and presence help me unthread my very tangled head !!
