Puppy Love

You know what's great?  What's great is when the editor of your next picture book sends you the book jacket, which you've never seen before, and you just love it.Now, I'm not surprised that I love it.  Along the way, as my manuscript--which tells the true story of Dozer the dog, who ran away from home to join a half-marathon benefiting cancer research--has traveled the road from words on a page to words divided up into a 32-page picture book to 32 pages illuminated by art, I've seen sketches and draft illustrations from the illustrator, David Opie.  And I thought Dave was on the road to completely capturing the energy and joy and heart of this adorable Goldendoodle.  But, you know--you never know.  Only now I do know, and I can't wait to share not only the entire jacket, but the pages of the book when we get closer to publication.For now, though, I can share  Dave's post on his own blog about his process in creating Dozer.  He writes about how he started with lots of drawings, using photographs as references.  He progressed to action poses, and then to poses and emotion from the story.  On he moved to color studies--lots and lots of them, as he approached the final version of Dozer.  If the creative process interests you, or if you're just a sucker for pictures of dogs, I hope you'll click on over to Dave Opie's blog for the details.