Marie LeTourneau

Look inside

STUFF

Below are early sketches of Petite Michelle and the gang from "Mice"...

Some early Petite Michelle's...

I had to think about her look, what she might wear, how she would walk, stand, move...

This is one of the first sketches of Petite Michelle and Chef Marcel - the story was in it's infancy stage then.
I think I did this drawing in 1999.

Sketches in crayon (why was I using crayon?)...that is actually my metal wire laundry basket pictured above. It has wheels, or at least did until my kids decided to use it as a go-cart!

Petite Michelle today.

Getting closer...here, her shirt has vertical stripes instead of horizontal, but she has her head scarf and basic look I was going for...dainty, elegant and petite!

Sketch of the bistro bar..........I wanted it to look hip and trendy.

I had actually tried different colors for the front of the bistro, such as red and blue - mulling each one over with my publisher. We eventually decided black was the way to go.

A dining room sketch.......

Now for images that didn't make it in the book.....

It takes a lot of sketches to work out the final images in a book. At first my publisher Peggy and I were going to design the book horizontally, then decided vertically would be better. That decision required me to rethink every image, and a whole batch of new sketches. Overall, I probably did over 100 sketches when all was said and done. The book only has approx. 25 full illustrations in it from cover to cover!