My illustration process for “Little Red Writing Hood and the Big Bad Editor”

Happy December! My family just got back from visiting family in Franklin, TN, but before we traveled we got our Christmas tree put up! It was so nice to come home to it :) But now I’ve got to get to serious illustrating business, because my February 1st deadline will be here so fast!

For this post, I wanted to share a little of my process (which changes with every book)… Enjoy!


SKETCH: I started sketching out the characters and thumbnails back in February for this book – pre-covid. When I had the whole book roughly sketched out with pencil, I scanned each spread and assembled the drawings into a multi-page PDF, which I sent to the editor and art director at Aladdin/Simon&Shuster. Then, the pandemic hit and I didn’t hear back about the sketches until August! Good thing they liked the direction I was headed in and didn’t have too many notes/changes. Here’s one example of a spread that DID require changes…

FINAL DRAWING (just the lines): According to the notes the editor and art director gave me, they felt that we needed to compress several panels into one full spread. So I came up with this new composition…

They loved it! So I pulled the sketch into Procreate on my iPad and traced over it- “inking” it so to speak into crisper line work…




COLOR STUDY: After the drawing is finalized, I print it out small (4 times) on one sheet of 300lb Arches hotpress watercolor paper so I can experiment with colors. This step is SO IMPORTANT to my work not looking “clowny” using all the colors. A color study really is a game changer – believe me I’ve done both (with and without)!



None of the color studies (above) are perfect, but it gets me far enough to be able to confidently paint the real thing larger. I think the top left sample comes closest to what I’m aiming for.

I was inspired by the colors in these books. Do you recognize them?




FINAL PAINTING: Now, I paint bigger, life-sized, about 90%. I work at this size so it comfortable fits back onto the scanner when the painting is complete.




PHOTOSHOP TOUCHES: You lose a lot of umph and color in the scanning process, so I use Photoshop to pump up the color saturation and I can also add in little details that I may not have thought of beforehand. Can you see the little fish I added nibbling on the upside-down muffin?



Ta-da! Here’s where I ended up (after a little back and forth with the art director first). This could go through a few more changes depending on feedback from my art director, but I think it’s pretty close. To know for sure, you’ll have to compare this email/post to the final book when it comes out in Spring of 2022!

I hope you enjoyed this look into how I work! And keep an eye out for Little Red Writing Hood and the Big Bad Editor (written by Rebecca Kraft Rector) in Spring 2022!

All my very best!

-Shanda