Title: La vaca Lola y otros cuentos
Author: Sarah M. White & Sarah E. Sterk
Publisher: TPRS Books
About: A picture book of a Spanish story for elementary Spanish learners. Enter the world of five beloved Spanish-language folk songs in this collection of whimsical short stories. Novice Spanish learners can dance with Tingalayo, sing with el coquí, discover la vaca Lola’s big secret, laugh with caballito blanco, and find out what kind of food la gallina will finally feed her baby chicks. This book includes 110 unique words with 963 total words and would make a great addition to Elementary Spanish curriculums or even for middle school or high school learners due to the simple language in each story to foster a sense of reading success.
These are the illustrations of the first story, Tingalayo. I had so much fun illustrating the antics of a donkey that just wanted to eat spaghettis and dance! Coming up with their poses and making them work was the best part of illustrating it:
These are some of the scenes from the other four stories in the book. They're all mostly set in farm environments with many different animal species and it was a great theme to work with.
These are the brainstorming and process images for the cover. On the first line you can see an original thumbnail next to its cleaned up sketch and also another two compostition ideas done from the client's ideas. Sometimes my process starts with a very rough thumbnail sketch and I build up from it and other times I have a clearer idea of the composition and the drawings are more fluid from the early stages on.
After some consideration from the client, she decided she wanted the cover to give a hint of what the main story, La vaca Lola, was about. So we came up with this composition of the characters in a hide-and-seek situation, with the woods around the farm as background. I also created the lettering for the title, which you can see here in two versions: with and without the dashed lines representing the characters' walking path.
Below is the composition the client chose: Enrique in the foreground and Lola hiding behind him. But Lola was too far behind to be properly seen, so we decided to bring her forward to give her some highlight too as well as give the scene some much needed tension.
And finally this is the chosen composition for the front cover, with the characters closer to the viewer and some of the farm showing in the background. The client also chose the complete title lettering with the dashed lines and we decided to extend the illustration to the back cover. There are no sketches for it as sometimes I like to improvise in situations like this and I was given the freedom to do so here.
This is the final version of the colored illustration and cover layout with all the required elements. I like all the shades of green I was able to put together and the farm elements indeed gave the composition the right feel and tied it to the story's environment, instead of making it look like a generic forest. I also enjoyed creating the title's lettering and am very happy with the overall layout. I like everything about this book but this cover is probably my favorite part of it.
TPRS' books all have a glossary section and they are usually illustrated too. I was asked to create extra character poses and objects. These are the character/object sheets I created for each story, along with the original sketches of each drawing.
And finally here is one of my favorite parts of showing a new project: the mockups. I haven't yet seen the printed book but from what I'm told it looks pretty close to these images. So I can't wait to have it in my hand and I hope you have enjoyed this project as much as I enjoyed working on it!
Contact: oliviapintoilustra@gmail.com