Last Minute Photos

We've been working on another book since last summer. It's based on the Artist Story photographed back in early 2018, and features the story of my Butterfly Narae, who as an artist working towards her upcoming solo art show decided to hold children's art classes in order to help pay the bills.

The story was inspired by a series of small, doll size paintings that my sister Marianne did for me as a Christmas gift, to hang over the fireplace that Jan had just made for me a month earlier. I thought the paintings were too nice to just show up in the background in a doll's room now and then, and decided to do a story featuring them.

It's a lengthy process putting a book together, choosing photos from among the hundreds that were taken years ago, and even then there's always a couple of new photos that need to be taken. Thankfully dolls don't age, and I still have most of the clothes and props from the original photos, so it was simple enough to take some new photos of Narae for the cover.  I dressed her in the tops and paint aprons that she had worn in the story, and took photos....

In the end, we went with Narae wearing the blue art apron for the cover....

There was some inconsistency in the photos in the book during the final art show when Byuri wanted her Mom to buy the painting Narae did of her and two friends.  We needed a new photo to help fill the space in the page layout. So I had to dress Byuri like she had been six years ago in the actual story, and take photos of her with her painting....

Then the perfect one was added to the page...

When a book is being finalized each new pdf is gone over and over, checking and editing and reworking until it's perfect. The book obviously had only a fraction of the photos from the original story on my website, and just the best ones which told the story in the most concise way were included. However there was one art class where one of the students - Bonnie - decided to go her own way and make a butterfly instead of a caterpillar like everyone else. It had been explained in the original online version, but not in the book. So I needed to take a new photo in order to explain her choice. Which meant setting up a scene that would look like it had been taken six years ago along with all the other photos from that particular art class. Thankfully I'd kept all the children's art from the story, and even the scraps of finger painted paper....

So Bonnie, who had since moved to Medieval times, had to be changed into the exact same outfit she had been wearing in the story six years ago; the same outfit, the same paint smock, and the same ribbons in her hair. Then we needed a photo taken from above, showing her butterfly art...

...and then the photo was added to the page in the book....

The children's artwork in the story would never have looked believable if it hadn't been for Jan, and our three granddaughters who were 8, 9 and 10 at the time. They were the ones who did most of the children's artwork. Thankfully again, I'd saved most of that as well, and took a photo....

...for the final Thank You! page.....

The first test copy of the book has just been printed and should arrive any day now. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turned out.