©DON TATE
ILLUSTRATION
Submitting sketches for approval to paint
After finishing my sketches, I copy them down to the exact size of the finished book. Then using the galleys sent to my by Houghton Mifflin, I create a layout of the book with the sketches in place. The art director also sent to me the computer layout, created in Quark Express along with the fonts so I could print out extra galleys if needed.After packaging and shipping the layout, I wait. The wait is usually long and awful because in my world, my book is the most important thing in that art director's life. I figure they will forget their busy schedules and drop everything once my sketches arrive then immediately call to shower me with praise. NOT! Normally, I'm lucky if someone calls me any sooner than 3 weeks. To my suprise, Bob Kosturko emailed me the very next day to say that he had received the work and how much he liked it. He'll never know how much us illustrators appreciate that.
Getting approval of the sketches went smoothly. All but two of the sketches were approved for final painting. I was disappointed about one of the sketches not making the cut. Of course it was one of my favorites (If I could just illustrate a book with all the concepts of my career that didn't make the cut...). Bruh rabbit stuffed and balled-up in a sack and hanging from a tree limb. I could just see him all tangled up in his own legs and ears and big feet. This is how I portrayed the scene, but in order to illustrate this and also communicate that he was hanging from a tree, I needed to do a cut-away type of image. This didn't go over well having such a different approach (the cut-away) than other pages. But I wasn't going to argue, they gave me great latitude to create and approved almost all my work with very few changes. You can't ask for more than that.