How to illustrate a Little Bo Peep picture

Hiya!

I love creating sweet whimisical illustrations for kids. I challenged myself to create an illustration for the children's nursery rhyme Little Bo Peep.

Little Bo Peep is a young cat and she is looking for her sheep who are playfully hiding in the meadow. The aim with this piece is to draw the art in a style that would be suitable for baby board book publishing. The plan is to draw simple shapes and make the art joyful, uplifting and colourful. I also kept in mind a comment my agent made about the idea that the sheep could be counted by children (learning element).

The original sketches were drawn in an A4 sketchbook first, looking at reference ideas I had collected. Then I scanned the sketches into to the computer and drew a square illustration. The picture evolved into a double page spread where I added a big tree to hide the sheep for Little Bo Peep. I moved the elements around until everything felt like it had its own space. I curved Little Bo Peep's arm at the end to show more of a gesture that she was looking around for her sheep.

Then for colour I found lots of bright Spring colours and added handmade textures which were scanned in to Photoshop.

I also flipped the canvas horizontal at the end. That is how to draw a Little Bo Peep picture!