Four books, and a system so the art cannot drift.
Penelope June is a watercolor picture book series. Four manuscripts are drafted. Before a single illustration exists, the character and the palette are locked, because that is the part that breaks.
Why the system comes first.
A picture book series lives or dies on whether the reader believes it is the same character in book four as in book one. Not similar. The same. Children notice this faster than adults do and they are unforgiving about it.
Most self-published series get this wrong in the same way. They illustrate book one, love it, then discover in book three that the character's proportions have quietly wandered, and there is no way back without redrawing everything.
What is locked.
So the reference comes before the art. Proportions, silhouette, the specific palette, and the handful of details that have to be identical every time.
Everything else is deliberately loose. A system that specifies every frame stops being a system and starts being a cage.
Silhouette first. If it does not read at thumbnail size it does not read.
A fixed palette per book, drawn from one series palette, so the shelf looks like a set.
The short list of details that never change, kept separate from everything an illustrator is free to interpret.
The real goal.
This one is not a revenue project and I will not pretend otherwise. The goal is to take something from idea to a finished hardcover I would be happy to hand someone.
It earns its place here for a different reason. Holding a brand system tight across a catalog, when nobody is checking and there is no deadline, is exactly the discipline that keeps a company's documents from falling apart.
What this proves
- I hold a brand system tight enough that nothing drifts across a whole catalog.
- I front-load the decision that is expensive to reverse, rather than discovering it in book three.
- I can art-direct work I am not personally executing.
Tell me what you are trying to finish.
The expensive decisions are the ones you make by accident, early.
Send me the project that has been sitting there. I will tell you what I would do with it and whether I am the right person to do it.