The Girllustrators

John Nez, a very busy Seattle-based illustrator, has worked on more than fifty children’s books. His illustrations sing with attitude, color, fun, and lots of textures. In addition to creating artwork for everything from board books to historical fiction, he writes and illustrates some of his own imaginative stories, including The Twelve Days of Christmas in Washington and Cromwell Dixon’s Sky-Cycle, a story of high-flying invention. John was nice enough to answer a few questions about using technology in his work.

What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? About 80% of the work is digital. I usually do a very rough sketch with photoshop… then print that out and draw a finished drawing with real pencil on vellum. I like the texture of the real paper and the ability to flip the drawing around to any angle. Then I scan the finished drawing back into Photoshop and process it… adding color, texture, shadows and all the rest.

What applications do you use? Photoshop is my favorite. It even does vector art, so I rarely use Illustrator or anything else. I do use Indesign for making book dummies and I use Bridge for keeping track of everything. So the three applications that I always have on my dock are Photoshop, Indesign and Bridge. 

I’m now learning to make interactive ebook apps using a Photoshop extension called Kwiksher. It’s way cool. Since it has sound, animation and all kinds of cool effects. It’s like making a movie. Lights, sound & action. The question is whether or not it’s possible to actually make any money from ebooks.

What digital tool would you never want to do without? Photoshop.

What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? Well, looking back on the past, how I used to have to go to the copy shop and print out 35 pages of 11x17 art and then package it up and Fedex it off to the publisher… sure seems like a lot of extra effort. (Though I did get out and about more then… which probably was a good thing) In the ‘good old days’ I’d often get the specs for jobs that were all wrong… inaccurate type placement, etc. Faxes were the worst… they’d stretch the image and leave out critical parts entirely. Now though, with a PDF everything is exactly in place and the right size and ready to go.

What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? I’m working on some book projects… and I’ll be using everything. Real paints, real paper, scanned images, photoshop, wacom and lots of my basic talents. Oh, and I forgot to add… it all begins with a pencil! The drawing is the main thing… above and beyond any other bells and whistles. It’s the drawing!

For more on John’s process, visit The Studio section of his website for some wonderful step by step demo’s.