Today my Behance Subscribers took a deep dive into character design for children’s books.  I shared A LOT of information to help them develop a clear pathway to consistent character design.  It was great to go through the exercise of sharing the information again because it reminded me of some important resources I needed to pull off my shelf. As I teach this series, I’ll be working through my own picture book dummy that needs an overhaul.  By the end of the series, I hope there will be lots of great stories ready for submission to agents and editors!   

​If you are a children’s book writer or illustrator and need someone to walk you through the process of creating a book dummy, please do join us at any time for the subscriber series. 

This step includes a look at cover design as I share some of the sketches I completed for my version of MATILDA by Roald Dahl.  Check out my sketches and watch the livestream as I talk about my thought process and some work did with Peachtree Publishing on Save the Crash-test Dummies.

Watch as I go through the process of developing the characters for Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood on the Behance Livestream.  As I go through the characters I am thinking about my own personal history and finding ways to add that to the story, while still maintaining the descriptions in the manuscript. 

This is Part 2 of the Character Design process for Re-Imagining Matilda.  Here is a review of the turnaround sketches I did for Matilda and Ms. Trunchbull in the Behance livestream to show my thought process.

I am working through an SCBWI Mentorship with Adela Pons, Art Director with Peachtree Publishing for the next 3 months. We have been tasked to re-imagine well known books for young readers.  I chose to do MATILDA written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake.  I did livestreams documenting my thought process for this work-in-progress for the early sketch phases of character design and book cover design. 

This book has had mass distribution, it has already been published again with a new cover and also has a movie feature available on the media market. It was quite a challenge to think about what my version of Matilda and her fellow characters would be. In the book, Matilda is 5 years old.  I started reflecting on who I was, where I lived and who was my best friend when I was 5 years old. I thought of my 5-year-old friend Betina and modeled my character design after her. 

I have been posting videos to KidsLitATL YouTube and Behance Livestreams for a while.  I use these platforms to share information about children's books and my drawing work-in-progress projects.  Livestreaming has allowed me to reach new audiences worldwide to talk about my process and many other things too!  It has been a positive experience that I hope to include other people in on the conversation. Please follow or subscribe to the online platforms to stay abreast new announcements!

I'll be livestreaming on Behance on
Tuesdays at 10am EDT - Sketching Livestream
Thursdays at 7pm EDT - Figure Drawing Session & Interviews

More to come on KidsLitATL Youtube and my Behance page:

• Figure Drawing Sessions
• Work-in-Progress
• Interviews
• NFT Drawing Sessions....and much more

Stay tuned and let's stay connected!

-TeMika

Kwanzaa is an annual holiday celebrating the families and social values of Africans across the diaspora.  It was started in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga and is celebrated from December 26th to January 1st each year.  I try to practice the seven principles of Kwanzaa (Nguzo Saba) throughout the year. This week, I decided to challenge myself to think deeper about the meaning of each day by creating an illustrations centering children  in a variety of illustrative styles. 

Check out my https://www.instagram.com/temikatheartist to read the narrative behind each image and stay tuned as I update through Jan 1st.
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Day1 - Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.

Day 2 - Kujichagulia (Self-determination): To define and name ourselves, as well as to create and speak for ourselves.

Day 3 - Ujima (Collective work and responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems and to solve them together.

Day 4 - Ujamaa (Cooperative economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

Day 5 - Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Day 6 - Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

Day 7 - Imani (Faith): To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.