Overview
The creation of Lowery and the Technicolor Trek was a two-year passion project that began about a few months after I began dating my husband, John. Two of the things I love most about John are his sentimentality and his creativity. Just before his niece’s first birthday, he came to me with a grand idea –– he wanted to make Lowery a picture book where she was the heroine of the story. Together, we devised a storyline that chronicled Lowery’s journey from the beach his family visits every year on Cape Cod to her home in Boston’s South End. We introduced colors in the story to mirror her own development in the narrative. Lastly, we wrote the story in English and Portuguese, the language John learned while serving in the Peace Corps in Mozambique.
Objectives
Write and illustrate a story starring Lowery that showcases landmarks she’s familiar with to teach her about colors.
Process
The book began with a sketched out storyboard, where John and I puzzled out Lowery’s journey and where each color of the rainbow would be introduced. We decided to begin entirely in grey and introduce colors one by one. John came up with sentimental stops along the journey for his family and soon the initial outline for the story was complete.
My first approach to the book was painting in acrylics and adding text in InDesign. However, I wasn’t incredibly happy with the first two spreads I created. I began experimenting with creating the illustrations in Illustrator. I found this method more nimble and vibrant so I pivoted to creating spreads in Illustrator, using sketches of elements of each scene as markers to paint over with brushes in Illustrator.
The illustrations were created piece by piece over the course of the next year until I finally compiled all ten spreads of the book. Armed with a rough draft of my work, I shifted my focus to making sure my drawings were cohesive and packaging everything up into a book with front and back covers and a dedication. While thinking about the overarching theme and title of the story, I wanted to make the incorporation of colors stand out more.
When initially illustrating Lowery’s dress, I added owls to it because they are her favorite animal. She called them “hummums” and the term became a loving phrase spoken by the entire family. When looking back at my illustrations, I realized a fun way to track the colors present in each spread would be to add “hummums” of each color to Lowery’s dress –– a revision that tied the story together through Lowery’s sentimental word.
An inadvertent side effect of the two years it took for me to work on this book is that Lowery grew from a toddler to a child, and my illustrations of her depicted her growth. From the first spread to the last, you can see Lowery’s features grow and mature. Now, when I look at the book, I remember watching Lowery grow up as I grew to become part of her family. It was a special project.
Impact
At five, Lowery still picks her book for her bedtime reading and now she can even recognize words as she learns how to read.