Creating the Cayman Creatures Colouring Book

FIND OUT THE PROCESS I WENT THROUGH TO CREATE MY VERY OWN COLOURING BOOK

Hello to all you lockdown lovelies! It's Debs here, and I am going to share with you how I went about creating my adult colouring book, in case anyone out there is thinking of making your own, or just interested in the process. Before I start, a quick note, other than the title, I will keep my c's to a minimum, I'm not quite as much of a human thesaurus as Miss Rohleder.

A long long time ago on an island very nearby, the idea of turning my artwork into a colouring book was implanted into my mind by Aimee inception style. Nah, not really, she just brought it up every so often, that my style of artwork would lend itself quite nicely to a colouring book. I agreed, but it was just one of those projects that got put at the bottom of the list, behind, classes, glazing, and parenting. Then the perfect opportunity for a little project came along, the birth of my next child! Although the first few months with my first child Lily were a bit of a blur, I did remember A) being very bored in the hospital for three days and B) just how much a newborn sleeps and C) that I did not take full advantage of visiting family/babysitters, this time around I wanted to take advantage of this. 

Getting Started

The first part I did was pre-hospital research. I compiled a list of animals found in Cayman, and tried to have a mixture of land, sea and sky creatures. At this point I had no clue how many I would put into the book. 

Initial Sketches

Then I began little mini sketches to figure out the layout for each animal, some were quite tricky given the portrait style of a colouring book, fish especially, because if I just did a side shot of them, there was a lot of empty space.

Supplies

Now all the prep was done, I bought myself a couple of markers and packed them and my favourite sketchbook in my hospital bag and waited. By the way, pink pig sketchbooks are amazing, and since being given them to do my GCSE work in, are the only ones I ever use.


Lily was a giant baby (10lb5oz) so I was due to have a second C-section, which I was fine with, and it meant I could plan ahead to know when I was going in. Or so I would have liked! My doctor had to go off island and decided to try and squeeze me in the next day after an appointment. Slightly terrifying turning up at the hospital and just waiting to randomly be taken through, especially as we'd decided that my husband may as well go to work, because it may not happen until evening. Im not sure he got much work done, staring at his phone all day, but it worked out, because I ended up going in at 5:30. 

Getting Started

This meant I had a whole day to start my book and it was a great distraction. I started with the chicken, I don't know why, maybe the smell of the hospital chicken for lunch (that smelt sooo good, probably because I had been told to fast from 7PM the night before) I sketched him, lets call him Gerald, then outlined him with a skinny sharpie.

Patterns

I then went back in to Gerald with some intricate patterns with a really skinny pen. I would like to say that I was really organised and planned out every pattern, however, I very much just made it up as I went along.

I'll admit, there's a slight blur now, I can't remember how far I long I got with Gerald until I got wheeled through, what I do remember though, is one of the midwives telling me 'you wont get anymore of that done once this baby comes' I took that as a challenge :-)

All went to plan, and Little Baby Grace was born, a little smaller than Lily, at 8lb10oz, she seemed very small. It was a while before I did any more drawing in the hospital that day, because it hurt to move, and look at that cute face, how could I stare at a sketchbook instead of her!

Ok back to the book, I know, its hard, I've just put a cute baby picture up, and have a 1000 more I could add, but focus, we're learning about my book!

I managed to do three pages while in the hospital, Gerald, Frank the green Iguana, and Donald the turtle (My great uncles, feel free to make up your own names for all remaining animals)

Although I have drawn many of the animals before, I made most of them different to my original pictures. The only really similar one was the seahorse.




As I said earlier, I took full advantage of both my parents, and my husbands parents visiting. While Grace was sleeping, they occupied Lily, and I could have a nice relaxing time drawing my animals. I was averaging one drawing a day, it was great! I resisted the temptation to have any late night drawing sessions when Grace had woken me up for a feed. 

Book Design

After a lot of research I found a great printing company in the U.S, and also settled on 24 for a decent number of pages for my book. I also looked at a lot of existing books for help with the cover, and decided that a partially coloured page from my book would work best. 

Cover Work

I scanned in all my drawings, and decided on the blue Iguana for the cover. I coloured it in on the computer, and designed the cover using some very basic software that caused me great frustration. 

The printing company I had found, had an online template for the book creation that was really easy to use, and so putting the book together happened really quickly. I completely overthought which animal should be next to which, probably because it felt like I needed to be putting more thought into it, after all my research. All was done, and I sent it to the printers and anxiously awaited a proof to be sent. 

Proof Delivery

It arrived a week later, I was sooooo excited! 3 months of hard work, and my book was in my hands! Grace was excited too obviously.

So, there's a reason proofs exist, and that's because people like me, make lots of mistakes. I'd managed to avoid any spelling mistakes, as I flipped through, it looked great, boom, get me! Then I get to the last page....


I hadn't thought it through, I had put Jack the jellyfish (sorry, I had to name one more after my grandad) on the inside of the back cover, and the back cover is shiny, therefore, not very coloured pencil friendly.

That's what proofs are for, so back again I go to the program, my head all confused as to what to do. For those of you not in the book printing business, with this style of binding, if you want to add 1 more page, you actually have to add 4. I did not realise that, so proof 2 (luckily digital this time) came back and had 3 blank pages dotted around. Maybe I'll get rid of jack :-( maybe I'll do three more drawings, oh! but then I have to change my index page, and that was not fun to put together! So I decided to add an intro page, as I'd seen in other books out on the market. I also took advantage of the shiny inside back cover and added in a little bio about myself and my other artwork. Proof 3 came through and all looked good, time to order 250! terrifying, I must have looked over that proof 20 times to make sure everything was right. 






After what felt like forever, they were finally released from customs one week before Cayman was put on lockdown. Find the Cayman Creatures Colouring Book in our shop in Camana Bay or online here.

Colouring In

Like a few other people, I have taken advantage of being trapped in my home, and I too have been colouring in my book pages! They will be available as prints as soon as everything returns to normal and we're back in the shop. 


Until then, I look forward to seeing you all on social media. Thanks for reading my ramblings, and I hope it inspires you to use this time wisely and do one of those projects that's at the bottom of your to do list.

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