“Suza and the Shadow” is a children’s book about love. We all know romantic love, friendship love, and parent-child love. But most of us don’t know self-love. Throughout the story, the protagonist discovers self-love and learns it’s okay to be selfish.
Project
The story’s author is Joonas Edward Hirvelä, who is a Finnish author. 2021 I started to do the project with Joonas Edward Hirvelä. I found him thanks to my coursemate, who tagged me in his post. I wrote to him. He sent me the stories he had written, and I chose the story “Suza and The Shadow”. In that story, I could recognize myself because I was also struggling to love myself all my life. When the book was ready, I showed the book to some people, and they said that it is a common problem with girls.
Creating the book illustrations
First, I divided the text into different parts. Then, I sketched an idea for each part of the text, which I also showed to the author. When both of us liked the idea, I started drawing the image on paper, for which I used Finline ink pens. When the black line work was done, I digitized the image in Photoshop and added the colors digitally in Procreate.
In that link you can find video of the book:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1ANRYtYNdo/
Idea in sketchbook:
Cleaned lines:
Final Illustration:
AkileerArt 