
How Many Bears?
Personal Project
How many bears can sleep in the cave? With this story, I dipped my toe into writing while trying to up my illustration game.
Author and Illustrator
Josh Lewis
BOOK DEVELOPMENT



For this book, one of my focuses was on creating unique characters for each of the ten bears. Not only do each of the bears look different, but I wanted to capture their distinct personalities.

An exploration of emotion with the bear's mouth
THUMBNAIL SKETCHES

Before diving into sketches, I create these rough sketches. While things change naturally along the way, this lays out the plan for the book.
SKETCHES


For the covers, I usually explore options. The cover needs to be simple, introduce the story, and draw the potential reader in.





The challenge was to pack these bears into the cave while building to a visual crescendo. Some of the pages adjusted slightly in the final painting to help the visual rhythm.