Inside the Illustration of Dandy and Dazza with Brett Curzon

Dandy and Dazza final concept art. Apart from Dandy and Dazza I decided to add a side story in the illus-trations of the park squirrel. He became the second park ranger, just for a bit extra fun, I always like that in books.... so the squirrel was born.

The font choice was something that I spent a bit of time on trying to find a font that matched Dazza, in the end I drew the font to match his personalty, because I couldn’t find anything that really suited.

This was the first version of Dazza, but it was decided he needed more stink, more cheekiness, he needed to be a scallywag. So I came up with stinky Dazza, this was the first drawing of him proudly showing off a poo that he just did. As you can see in the top drawing I replaced it with a tennis ball.

My childhood friends dog was inspiration of this version of stinky Dazza, his name was Fang, he was such a funny dog and yes he did love to eat firecrackers, maybe he played a part in them becoming illegal. He was always scratching fleas, and licking unmentionables..

Dandy on the other hand, it was decided he needed to be like a red setter,  a Poodle might come to mind but  he direction of a Red Setter seemed to work best.

The fur was decided that it need to be short rather than long, (an image I used for Dandy).

The two contrasting worlds of Dandy and Dazza.

The Fly and Fluer inside book jacket pattern.

Rough page layout and editors notes and direction to me.

As you can see the rough drawing is that much different to the final art, again the editors note in yellow give the illustration direction. A lot of thought goes into the text for me, where it sit on the page, so I will basically rough of a whole book and see how the text will work along with the illustration, so they don’t compete against each other. 



Massive thank you to Brett Curzon for this wonderfully detailed insight into the world of the illustration behind a picture book! Check out this brilliant story by purchasing a copy now, below!
Brett can be found on Instagram.

Dandy and Dazza

Dandy and Dazza are different in so many ways. Dandy is a best in show sort of hound. Dazza is a rough and tumble sort of mongrel. Can these very different dogs ever be friends?

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