I Love You at 12

My friend Haydée Zayas has been writing and promoting books for a while now. But this past summer, when she contacted me to collaborate with her on one of her creations, I was ecstatic to begin!

I was to Illustrate and do the graphic design for her book. "I Love you at 12" tells the story of Minerva. A girl growing up with autism and her mother recounting mayor steps along her life. It was a treat to be able to be a part of this project!


I want to show you the process "behind the scenes".



Haydée based her story on a real person, so she sent me a picture of how she looks. While I was to use (maybe) some of her facial features, Haydée was clear that she wanted anyone with autism to be represented, so It wasn't supposed to look too much like the real Minerva.



I drew some doodles to get a feel for the books characters. Teddy, Mom, the horse...

Next up. I hand-drew the characters in their actions shots for the book. Haydée was very specific on the style she wanted. She chose the "continuos line illustration style". I've been following Von Glitschka for quite some years now and I knew he was amazing at this style. So I went and researched how he did them and tried his approach on for size, without copying his own style, of course. His methodology was what most interested me at this point.

So, once the "analogue" version was done, I scanned the hand-drawn Illustration and vectorized it for a clean and crisp feel. I repeated the process for every page. Here's a few more:

 Once finished I went and designed how the book would look and how the pages would work. The starting/ending line of every illustration goes trough every page, connecting her life events throughout the book, while including the reader in them.



We are most satisfied with the end result. We're hoping many can relate with the tale and realize, they're not alone in their difficulties.

For your own original copy, be sure to visit amazon. The book is ready to be purchased there. Here's the direct link: https://amzn.to/2EQVoar.