The next stage is to paint over the rough marks of the pencil sketches. As I do this I am refining them, making small alterations so that they become a bit more accurate. Billy starts looking more like Billy - the world of Nat the Cat is starting to materialise. I find that brush painting makes my line very fluid and produces a nice feel to roughs at this stage. These darker lines also produce a more substantial image which can be photocopied so my publisher can have a record of them. You will also notice that the text has now been set in the typeface from the book - the text of course takes up a certain amount of space on the page and you have to know how muich this is in order to determine what area is left for the illustrations.

Now I am ready to start the artwork I have to map out more exactly where everything is going…