How to draw How to Disappear

Or: why the outlines stayed out.

A few months ago, my daughter Sasha (age 4 and 3/4) came to me and said she doesn’t want to be in today. She wants to skip it.

But how does one simply disappear from a day?

I had to sketch some suggestions…

How to Disappear, some ideas.

Thus, a book was born.

A study of the main (really, the only) character, unnamed.

And an art style had to be decided on.

But what would be a good way to convey an ethereal world, one where someone can be delible, removed from existence, if only for a day?

Water colors, of course, and delicate tones of muted pastel, to give a homely feeling.

Due to my horrible sense of perspective, I decided to build the scenes in vector graphics, composing them with precise lines.

But the ultimate solution came by chance, after I had painted them in. I wondered what I should do with the outlines — would I trace them with a pen? Should i use a a darker hue of the fill?

Then I turned off the outline layer (in my drawing app) and all my thoughts disappeared with it.

I shall leave the outlines out…

Here are some quick clips of the process of creating the illustrations for How to Disappear. Hope you find them useful, inspiring, or at least mildly entertaining.