#tigerbook

 Way back in 2014 I painted this painting and titled it Stripes for Tiger. At the time I was working on building my illustration portfolio and trying to come up with ideas that I could expand into full-fledged picture books. I figured this poor tiger had a story to tell so I started working on some follow up images to see if the rest of the story would appear.

I scribbled out a few scenes where I thought the story might go - mostly really generic, over-dramatic things that didn’t spark much. But, there was one I sort of liked - one of a baby tiger. It didn’t quite seem like the same tiger as the first painting I did, but I decided to try that image as the start of the story, whatever that story might turn into.

I’m extremely excited to announce that my first published book is coming out in March! A Tiger Without Stripes is a modern fable about soul-searching and self-acceptance told through the eyes of a tiger searching for her stripes. Each week leading up to the launch I’ll be posting some of the process work that went into bringing this story to life. I’m going to call them Tiger Tuesdays because alliteration is fun :p

Tiger Tuesday: Launch day, hurray, hurray!! 🎉🎉🎉

It was so thrilling to finally see this book in the flesh and get to hold it in my hands! Thank you all for coming with me on this look back on my book making process - I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the behind-the-scenes work on A Tiger Without Stripes and I hope you’ll consider picking up a copy for yourself! 

Once I'd refined the story and thumbnails to within an inch of their life, I was finally ready to turn those little thumbnails into proper sketches. I did another run of thumbnails focusing on values, then used Photoshop to upsize the thumbs and traced them to vellum before refining each sketch.

When I was finished I put them all together to make a nice, polished dummy book, which I planned to enter in the SCBWI Works-in-Progress and send around to agents - not only did the dummy win the Work-in-Progress award, it also helped me get my agent, the wonderful Jamie Weiss Chilton of the Andrea Brown Agency!

In 2018 we got an offer from The Innovation Press to publish!

Having drawn up some ideas for my tiger's story, I started to write! And as I wrote, suprise, suprise, that little cub grew up into an entirely different tiger than the one I'd started with.

This tiger wasn't the nervous guy from the painting, she was bold and curious and she had some serious questions - and so I put aside my old thumbnails in order to tell this new tiger's story.

I worked up a new set of thumbnails and pasted them together to make the first tiny version of the book (they're always so cute at that age~)

---

You can Preorder my book, A Tiger Without Stripes, here: https://jaimiewhitbread.com/books

And don't forget! If you send me a screenshot of your preorder verification, you'll be entered to win an original artist trading card - I'll be drawing 5 winners each week until March, so you'll have lots of chances to win!

Las muchas hondas huellas de Miguel Gil Mejía

Si has sido una persona de bien, al final de tu caminar sobre este planeta cuando la muerte te visite y fijes residencia permanente en algún cementerio, probablemente le dolerás a alguien. A tu familia inmediata, a tus compañeros del diario vivir y quizás hasta a esos amigos que no veías hacía muchos años. Si es así, felicidades, has dejado huellas.

Naturalmente, no todos dejaremos las mismas…

Em sua terceira busca, a jovem Kelsey Hayes e seus tigres precisam vencer desafios incríveis propostos por cinco dragões míticos. O elemento comum é a água, e o cenário de mar aberto obriga Kelsey a enfrentar seus piores temores. Dessa vez, sua missão é encontrar o Colar de Pérolas Negras de Durga e tentar libertar seu amado Ren tanto da maldição do tigre quanto de sua repentina amnésia. No entanto o irmão dele, Kishan, tem outros planos, e os dois competem por sua afeição, além de afastarem aqueles que planejam frustrar seus objetivos.

  Voltar à estante