Ella German

I worked out my dummy book Butterfly Rolls primarily with these thumbnail sketches.

For this book, I used a lot of photo reference.

I lightly outlined the scene in pencil…

and then started playing with color.  I used manila file folders for the paper.  It’s lovely dough color seemed to go with the baking theme of my book and it stood up well to rework and layering with the colored pencils and wetness from the markers.

The white on white kitchen from the photo left pretty much everything to the imagination!  The following sketch was continually reworked and used as reference for my finished drawing.

The notations you see are the marker and colored pencil combinations that I decided for each part of the drawing.  Marker was laid down first, then colored pencil, and finally, ballpoint pen mixed with colored pencil for the outlining.

I also worked through quite a few facial studies before I settled on a style I liked.

Here’s the finished drawing.