The other day, I looked through the completed spreads of my new picture book. I find, if I refrain from looking at them for several days, I can see everything afresh and any anomalies jump out at me. As I followed the visual sequence, my eye moved smoothly from page to page until I reached the tenth spread when I got a colour jolt where there was a sharp colour change, quite out of sync with the rhythm of the story. I'd forgotten I still had spread 9 on its board and so had accidently jumped from spread 8 to spread 10. Had I needed a climax there, a colour jolt like this would have been a good way of achieving it.
So it was with relief I inserted spread 9 in its correct position and could see it act as a colour transition, in harmony with a change taking place in the story at that point.
I'd always known that each page of a picture book has its own feeling and atmosphere but I don't think I'd been fully conscious, while painting, of the subtle part colour plays in the dynamic and overall rhythm of a story.
