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Emily Schofield

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Stormy ocean picture book spread

February 19, 2025

Here’s my latest picture book spread for my portfolio! It came a bit out of nowhere after I little light bulb went off in my head, whilst looking at two older pieces of art… let me take you to the very beginning. Quite a few months ago now I made a pair of ocean themed collages for a top tier Patreon member. These were two separate pieces made a month apart which, were meant to be in a matching set. As with everything I make, I start with a sketch. Sometimes a sketch ends up getting quite detailed, and others its the quickest little scribble if I already have a clear vision in my mind!

Here’s the process pictures of the boat and tentacle piece which I made first. I painted enough textures to last a very long time, using a mixture of dry brushing, sponges and splattering to create the look of splashing waves.

 
 
 
 

Above is my first attempt at the collage, and goodness me its rough! I don’t really know what I’m looking at truth be told, but I remember being so frustrated with it, I started again. I often say with collage it will look bad before it looks good, but on very few occasions I do just have to admit defeat and try again!

With a fresh base, this time working landscape instead of portrait, it came together much better, as I had the space lengthways to build in the wave. I built in my main big shapes first and gradually piece by piece slotted in all the extra swirls, which really create the feeling of a stormy sea.

 
 
 
 

Here are the process pictures of the whale piece coming together a month later! I wanted this piece to clearly match the last so I used textures cut from the same paper and kept refering back to the original boat piece.

 
 

For the whale in this piece I traced my initial sketch, which I used as a template to make the final whale. What I love about using tracing paper, Is it’s transparency so I can place it on top of a texture to see if it fits the shape nicely before I cut it!

 
 

The two finished illustrations

After the two pieces were finished, I made another turtle piece to make the set into a trio and that was it… or so I thought! I was recently updating my website when I accidentally placed the two pieces really close together (similar to what you see above this text, for those reading on a laptop) and a lightbulb went off. I realised the top of the ocean on the right of the whale piece, almost perfectly lined up with the wave in the big boat piece - now that was a happy accident. Curiosity took the better of me, and I quickly pieced the two together in Photoshop. I had to do a little bit of work to get the two to seamlessly match, but I was very pleased with this experiment!

I left it at that for a while, until a few days later another idea popped in to my head… what if I made it in to a picture book spread? It wouldn’t require too much time and I had already done the hard part of making the art! So I mocked up a very rough plan and got to work scanning in extra textures and painting stormy clouds.

 
 
 
 

The piece required quite a bit of re working as I realised I needed to extend all edges of the piece to create space in the middle join for an imaginary margin. For picture books you never want to put too much of the important stuff right in the middle of the image, as if it was a real book it could get lost in the margin (of course I know this book isn’t real, but its still good practice to keep these things in mind). I ripped up a piece of textured paper which I scanned in too and used to create a bit of interest in the background and spent a while finding the best cloud layout which was a bit tricky!

And there you have it, thats how I took two separate existing pieces of art, and turned them in to one picture book spread! I’m so pleased with the outcome and it makes a lovely addition to the portfolio!

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All images are copyrighted by © Emily Schofield 2022