It took me four hours

(Libby sketch)

A text message to a friend: "Can you believe it I'm still inking this little white squirrel!"

 Well it went something like that. It took me about four hours to ink Libby, not the whole book not all the squirrels in the book just Libby. One Libby not all the Libby's in the book just this one Libby. I spent every spare minute I had (even at work shhhhh) inking the illustrations for this book and there are a lot of squirrels.
You wouldn't think it would take me so long by looking at the sketch above.

(Pen & ink version of Libby)

Libby had its challenges one of them was the amount of time it would take me to ink the characters.
I knew when I started that inking so many cute fuzzy creatures would be time consuming. Some how I did not realize how much time it would take.  Fun?  Yes it was!

 I think none illustrators don't always realize the length of time it can take to create a picture, to tell the story.
I love what I do even when the illustrations are not cooperating or working out as smoothly as I would like them and you can hear me talking to the artwork asking it why? Why? WHY!

(Finished artwork)



 But in the end it does work out usually all the frustration is forgotten.
 Until the next time why? Why? WHY! 

(This post was a good reminder for  me as I ask the same question to a little frog who is causing me trouble)