So Cosy by Lerryn Korda

This month, to celebrate the publication of So Cosy, we went behind the scenes with author and illustrator Lerryn Korda to take a sneak peek inside her sketch book and find out how she developed the story for her new picture book...

It has been wonderful to work with Walker books again.  Here is my new book – a cosy bedtime story for young children.  I hope you like it!

 

 

Sometimes people ask me how I get ideas for books so I want to show how So Cosy developed from one idea to something quite different. I find ideas evolve as I keep writing and drawing.  Sometimes I have no idea where an idea will go which is really exciting. So Cosy started off as a book about a tortoise called Slow Coach.  I’m hoping he will appear in another book.

In Slow Coach’s story he met a dog and it started to look quite cosy.  Unfortunately tortoises are not very snuggly so some other animals came along.

Here are some of my early So Cosy thumbnails.  They are quite messy and I do lots of them to figure things out.

 

Here are some quick sketches working out how many animals there would be. I didn’t want to use the computer on So Cosy and here are some of my painted workings out! 

 

 

Colour is really important to me and I take a long time working on a palette for a book.

 

Here are the animals painted so I can move them around and see how they work together or not!

 

The final elephant and goose colours. Mouse is small but very important in the story.  Here are some character sketches. 

 

 

 

One of my favourites, Hilda by Luke Pearson above my desk. I have found a few books that I had and loved as a child.

Anything Moomin!  The Giant Jam Sandwhich.
I remember the day I got this – it seemed as though I had been waiting for so long.  It became a favourite.

 

As a child I loved books and made loads.  Here are a few.  Despite my love of story and books I was not very good at spelling and grammar and my work was often covered in corrections from my teachers.

All sorts of things inspire me.  Currently I’ve been looking at the work of the Provensens and their brilliant Tales from the Ballet.

 

I saw the work of John Allin on one of my favourite blogs, www.spitalfieldslife.com.  He painted the Jewish East end much of which is now gone.

 

Find So Cosy at your local bookshop!