When I was asked to illustrate the first book of the Cat series by wonderful author Deborah Underwood, I knew from the manuscript that the story was strongly supported on characterization. I did hundreds of sketches and explored many different options for the way Cat would look like. This is a sample of one of the sketches that I brought to the meeting at the Penguin offices in New York City.
And this is the way Cat ended up looking like.
These are some studies for Cat's facial expressions.
And here and article from The Children's Book Review, where I speak with Deborah Underwood about the process of creating the book and Cat's character.
