Mon ami - behind the scenes

Dear friend,

Sun is shining, birds are singing, flowers are blooming. The city is slowly waking up and getting dressed in every colour of the rainbow. Spring is upon us! And with it, my new book comes out as well.

I am thrilled to introduce my new picture book : Mon Ami
This is a book published by Obriart Editions, a French publishing house who published two other books of mine over the years!

I worked on this beautiful project in spring 2024 and I am so happy to see it hitting the bookshelves now, just in time to bloom with the daisies! So to celebrate, I thought I would take a moment to share a few behind-the-scenes with you friends. This is always my favourite content to read and watch from other artists, so I am trying to do the same here 🥰

Let’s start from the beginning : the inspiration behind the story.

A couple of years ago, my cute nephew, who was only 3 at the time, asked me to look behind the living room’s curtains. When I did, he kindly explained that what I was looking at was a green fox, who was coming to visit him at the end of each day (of course there was nothing but a little bit of dust, but the story itself was enough to put sparkles in my eyes). This stuck with me since I thought it was really adorable and poetic. So when Cyprienne, from Obriart Editions, asked me if I’d like to write a story for her toddler collection, this came back to my mind. And this is how this little green fox came to be a character in this book 🌸

However, it took me a while to write the story. I knew the feeling I wanted to transmit but wasn’t sure what the story would look like or what would happen. I slowly started to sketch the characters in some joyful little scenes, hoping it might spark something.

Weeks passed and nothing came up. I was feeling a bit lost about what story I could possibly tell. I was not used to such a short and simple format — all of the books I’ve illustrated in the past were meant for children a little older, and it was hard for me to know which direction I should take when everything felt quite new about this book. After weeks of thinking and sketching, I only had a few sentences scattered here and there.

And then finally, on a fine April day, while I was taking a walk accross my hometown, THE idea came to me!
I wrote all of the story in ten minutes in my phone’s notes. I felt so happy with the result and I almost did not change anything from this very first draft that was hastily typed into my phone! That was it, I finally had the text. Now it was time to find the right style and atmosphere for the illustrations!

This is a sketch I made using coloured pencils and brushpens

At first, I was heading towards pencils and pens for this book. I knew I wanted a clean, minimalist style. Since the target audience were toddlers, I needed to have a clear composition in the illustrations, and not drown them in a million tiny details (which is usually what I love doing 😙). I thought the pens and pencils would help me get this crisp, clear atmosphere I envisioned!

However, after multiple tests, I realised that this was taking me way too long. When illustration is your job, you sometimes have to balance passion with efficiency. As much as I would have loved to lose myself for hours in each spread with a pencil in hand, it was simply not feasible. Budgets for children’s books are often very low in France, so you have to find ways to be both creative and strategic at the same time. This is not my favourite thing about your passion becoming your source of income, but it is reality! So I simply couldn’t allow myself to spend hours on end on each page.

This is when I started experimenting with digital illustration. It would be a good way to achieve the clean look I was looking for, while saving me time!

At first, I wanted to try replicating an ink or watercolour painting feeling.
But then I decided to just have fun and play with different textures!

A new challenge for me was to draw directly in CMYK.
In case you don’t know (which would be totally normal), whenever an image needs to be printed, it is best to deliver it to a client/publisher/company in a CMYK colour profile. Printing machines use Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and and Black inks. Whereas the most common colour profile for an illustration that will be displayed on a screen is RGB (Red, Green, Blue). This sounds a bit complicated and you might wonder what is the difference?
There are colours and shades that exist withing the RGB colour wheel, which cannot be replicated with CMYK inks. Which means that your colour choice is limited. One of the colours that look most different when changing an image from RGB to CMYK is blue — and it is also a shade I used A LOT in my work. All of my colours tend to have a bluish undertone, making it hard to translate it in CMYK sometimes. Which means I also had to spend a bit of time researching colours and experimenting, finding ways to stay true to my favourite colour palettes while working in a CMYK colour profile.

I hope I haven’t lost you there! I know this sounds very technical, but I’m only sharing this because it was a true revelation for me during this project - when I paint in watercolours, I don’t have to think about it and the publisher usually handles the colour correction afterwards. But in this case, it was on me to adapt to this new way of using colour!

But finally, one step at a time, experimenting, failing and trying again, I managed to find my way and make this story come to life through a colourful colour palette and two cute little characters!

With all of these challenges, this book project resembled nothing I had made in the past, and I learnt a lot through this process. It was such a beautiful project to work on and I am beyond grateful that I had the opportunity to make this green fox come to life. I hope this story can bring you a smile, and maybe you will read it with a little one — I hope they will also have a good time with these two smiley friends 🥰

Thank you so much for reading this article, for being here and for supporting my work. It means more than I could say 🌞
Sending daisy flowers, bird songs and white fluffy clouds!
See you soon 🌼