Well, hello there! I am still working on my portfolio, and just spent the past few days battling with the new engine of my site provider, but that doesn’t mean I cannot keep on working on my really goal: get into picture books!

I have decided to create a fictional story based on the real life story of Juliene Koepcke; who at 17 years old was the sole survivor of a plane crash, she felt around 2 miles from the air in the middle of the wild Amazon forest and made her way through the Peruvian Jungle, surviving a total of 11 days alone in the rainforest!

Yikes! That is indeed some survival skill right there, and it matches my love for bushcraft, nature and the strength of human will.

My Picture Book idea: Lost in The Amazon

RESEARCH on the subject you want to illustrate

As always , the first thing to do is to research as much as possible. To get some ideas and to understand the big picture, also get some visuals and make some rough sketches alongside reading. I read all the news article I could find about her. There’s also a documentary and a movie! How cool. But I haven’t been lucky enough to grab those, and since I’m trying to base my picture book on her story, I do not need to copy things, but to get inspired.

Sketch several ideas - the more the better

I did write some notes and made some annotations along my reading time, and to summarize I got so excited with the whole idea that I started right away with the cover:

Painting exploration

Or actually, deep dive into painting! Which I enjoy SO MUCH. I wish I could just paint all day without needing to eat or do some other vital things 😂. I will be using oil paintings for this project (and for the foreseeable future I will be using them from now on lol).

Preparing colors

Since I was going to paint a forest, a massive jungle lol, I needed to prepare some green colors to be ready to stay in the zone and keep on painting, these greens would be then modified or adjusted a little by adding some other colors, but to have them ready at hand and already premixed helps tons!

Starting the Painting process

Here you can see how I started applying the colors:

Finished illustration

At last! I am totally biased but I find this illustration absolutely gorgeous lol it’s a beautiful mix of greens and some yellows and purples that just make me happy fuzzy inside. ✨

So, what do you think? Would you have added something extra? Of course, this cover is going to give a general idea of what my story is about, which I cannot disclose yet! I will work of some spreads of the story, from the script layout I have, and hopefully the story will get published with the help of some amazing illustration agent or editorial.

Stay curious and happy painting!

Kiyary

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If you need inspiration and wonder the materials I use, here is my Amazon shopping list. If you buy from the link I get a small commission free from cost for you :) thank you!