The short answer is that I did it by hand without ink. I didn’t go to the sketch page and say ‘Here’s a turtle drawing, I want to draw that’. I decided on my own, and I like the result.
How did you find a way to make it look as realistic as possible?
I used a series of pencil sketches to get the shapes right as I wrote the letterings. They are all hand-drawn, so there are no brushes and no digital manipulation on the drawing. I just use the brushstrokes.
I did do all of the shading for each turtle, not just for the body. It’s hard to do that without getting really good at drawing using one tool.
Do you think it would be a nice turtle if it had wings?
That’s definitely a possibility. I’d love to see a turtle that flies! I’d love to see a turtle that does flips. That would be a big improvement!
Do you plan to publish the book?
That’s a very good question! I really do not plan on publishing the book at this point. It’s way too early in the process to decide what kind of a book would be. I’ve drawn many books, and I want to think about how I will make them different from these. I would like to be able to show them to my friends and not wait for an editor to give me an answer. You want to draw something that’s really different and fresh.
What’s it like when a child looks through a book that looks so much like a book
It’s interesting, because a lot of children have these weird things they see in books that they don’t see in real life. It’s funny, because a book that looks so much like a book can have really good meaning for someone. It’s not for everybody but for me it’s something that I like. The best books are the books I like.
Have you made any children’s books in the past?
No. I’ve tried drawing little pictures of turtles, little turtles in the house; that didn’t work out very well either. I’m afraid to try drawing turtles!
Do you have a favorite childhood toy or a pet you would like to have?
Yeah… I do. For some reason turtles have been a part of my life so much that I can only imagine what it must have meant to them. There’s a little stuffed turtle by T