I am working through an SCBWI Mentorship with Adela Pons, Art Director with Peachtree Publishing for the next 3 months. We have been tasked to re-imagine well known books for young readers.  I chose to do MATILDA written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake.  I did livestreams documenting my thought process for this work-in-progress for the early sketch phases of character design and book cover design. 

This book has had mass distribution, it has already been published again with a new cover and also has a movie feature available on the media market. It was quite a challenge to think about what my version of Matilda and her fellow characters would be. In the book, Matilda is 5 years old.  I started reflecting on who I was, where I lived and who was my best friend when I was 5 years old. I thought of my 5-year-old friend Betina and modeled my character design after her. 

I'll be working through the process of character design, concepts for spot illustrations and cover design, final grayscale illustrations and a final cover. Join me for this work-in-progress through March 2022.