Windows into Illustration: Sarah McIntyre

Created jointly by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre, the Adventuremice books, stories of a community of little mice who undertake some big adventures, are action-packed and full of humour. Each page features glowing full-colour illustrations of the Adventuremice and here Sarah McIntyre describes the creative process that goes into each one.

Of the nearly 100 illustrations in the new Adventuremice book, let’s focus on the title page. I love title pages; you see them before you really know what the story will be about, and it’s a clue to what’s going to happen later. One of the most enjoyable things about these books is the growing friendship between Pedro and Fledermaus. This later scene in the story is supposed to be quite serious, when they’re assembling mummy disguises to escape from the baddies, but I had fun showing them mucking about.

After Philip and I brainstormed the story, he wrote most of the words, although I kept helping with more ideas when we needed them. Then he helped me with the early sketches, which we call ‘pencil roughs’. We spent about two days filling spaces in between words, adding little jokes and details as we went.

I scanned our sketches and emailed them to designer Katie Bennett, who figured out how our sketches would best fit into the book’s pages.

It’s a tricky process: sometimes a picture neatly fills a space but doesn’t sit well enough with the story’s pacing. For example, a jokey picture might immediately follow a joke in a text and belabour the point too much. Or we might decide to show a character just before a surprising thing happens to them, rather than their follow-up reaction, to let the reader be in on the joke. Katie might find there’s a bit of extra space and we’ll slip in a fun extra picture. Or she might advise us not to let an important part of a picture fall down ‘the gutter’, the crack down the middle of the book where it’s hard to see what’s going on.

When Katie sent the layouts back, I printed out this page, about 150% larger than the size it would be in the book, then taped it to the underside of heavy watercolour paper. When I placed it on my light box, I could see through the thick paper, exactly where I needed to paint and areas I needed to leave clear for the words. The painting process took about five hours: to start, I painted a gentle yellow watercolour wash, to give the picture a warm, antiquated atmosphere, like an old papyrus scroll. After that dried, I used a Pentel brush pen to create thicker black lines, tracing the sketch, and finally used watercolour to paint all the details and shading.

Then I scanned the painting and, using Photoshop, placed it into the digital file Katie had created, sizing the picture so that it fit underneath my hand-lettered title banner and above our author names. Finally I emailed it to her, and she made sure all the pages were organised into a tidy book file that was ready to email to the printer. Now I have a finished piece of art that I can sell on our Adventuremice website or frame for my own wall. (I think I’m keeping this one!)

The Adventuremice books by Sarah McIntyre and Philip Reeve are published by David Fickling Books. Book eight, Adventuremice: Of Mice and Mummies, is out now, 978-1788453547, £6.99pbk.