A drawing from sketch to art

Hi Chaps,

I've just done a set of black and white samples of various characters aimed at early reader/chapter books.
You can see five of them on my website, the first five in the block of black and white pictures.
But here, I thought I'd post the development of one picture from first idea sketch in my sketch pad, to rough, scanned into photoshop, to finished drawing, so you can have a look.
I'll talk through the little brother stamping onto puddles.
First, is this idea sketch I did with real pencil in my real life sketch pad, while watching tv.
I do mostly sketch straight in photoshop, and just do all the stages there, but this time I just happened to be doing it on my sketch pad.

This one wasn't quite right, and the idea crystallised a bit in my head, and I was able to come up with this.

I do find that if I get a good image in my mind it's sort of a matter of 'copying' it out of my head onto paper.
I then reworked the drawing of the head a bit, and did this separate sketch of the head.

I then scanned it all in and stuck the second sketch and the head together in photoshop, like so

and then knocked them down to 40% opacity, a bit like putting it on a lightbox and putting a new sheet of paper over it, and drew the final 'inked' image.

And there we are.
Hope that's interesting and maybe a bit informative too :)

ABFFE 19th Annual Children’s Book Art Auction & Reception

Hi chaps,

I've donated some of my sketches to this year's Children's Book Art Silent Auction at the 19th Annual Children’s Book Art Auction & Reception.
The event is to help raise money in support of The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) which champions the free speech rights of young readers.
The auction is in New York on 29th May, but is also open to the public online, from Saturday May 18 at 9am, closing on Friday, May 24 at 9pm, so anyone can try and win something

Here's the website of the organisation: http://abffesilentauction.wordpress.com/
and here's the auction: http://myworld.ebay.com/abffe.
There's alot of good stuff there, so have a look, it's all for a good cause.

The sketches I've donated are character studies for my book Stuck With The Blooz, and also included is a copy of the book signed by both me and the author, Caron Levis.
As Caron is based in the US and I am in the UK, this copy will be the only copy in the world signed by us both!

The actual auction will take place on Wednesday, May 29 form 5:30 - 7:30pm in the River Pavilion of the Javits Convention Center in New York, in case you happen to be nearby,
and bestselling authors Jack Gantos and Lauren Myracle are co-hosting.

But here are my sketches so you can have a look