If you don’t know Orange Beak, they’re a very cool UK based group of art people who are passionate about picture books, and they host these zoom events for talks, workshops, and tutorials for authors & illustrators whether you’re more established or just starting out. I’ve seen Shawn Harris and Mac Barnett do one of these and they were a blast.

I’ll talk about process for each of my books thus far and what my journey into publishing was like, and show you how I like move from idea, to sketch, to final!

I of course also have to share some weird old art from when I was a kid, and some weird stuff from college too. And baby photos of me, very important

You can buy tickets here!

It’s also recorded, so you’d have access it for a few weeks afterwards, too. Neat!

Thanks!! :)

-Jess

I want to tell you about the inspiration behind the book, and what gave me the idea for the story. Sometimes the inspiration for a book is “I thought a spiderweb in a well would look cool” or “I heard someone say ‘the bear out there’ and it got stuck in my head”.

This one came around in a funny way, where I wanted to do a drawing for fun (which is something I basically never do, so I don’t know why I was moved to). I love Tomi Ungerer’s The Three Robbers, and wanted to try ripping off the way it uses black and blue to make a spooky nighttime picture. So I drew this with my iPad.

As soon as I made the cow, I had all that space on the top and bottom so I did what I do sometimes and just titled the picture. Then I was like “oh nice, that looks like a book”. Bang, easy!

I guess a cow is a real go-to for me because here’s another one I found from 2023, when I was messing with riso-y texture brushes in Procreate.

This was the next picture I made, before I’d finished writing out what the story could be. It’s fully just the cover of the book, I never even tried out an alternate design. I don’t actually fully remember if I had started writing out pieces of story yet or if this image just appeared in my brain.

This is the third thing I made for it, which you may recognize is just the first spread of the book. I had the line “it is nighttime and I am loose” in my head and had to make something to go with it.

Unfortunately I had already broken my cool blue and black drawing rule with both of these, but I liked this picture too much. Plus, I don’t know if I felt edgy enough at this point to do an entirely blue and black book, but maybe I will be in the mood someday. The red-orangey colour was too fun, and I wanted white for my cow to pop. I did change the grass to blue later, due to my designer saying the red was giving “lake of fire”. That worked out though, because it brought back in a ton of that yummy blue!

With these 3 things, I had almost the whole book recipe, so the plot felt like it was writing itself too. Cow is loose! Cow can’t see too well. Cow meets increasingly interesting fiends, such as vampires and burglars. Cow gets abducted, oh no! The ending was the part that required the most noodling, like most endings do.

I had a couple of cow books growing up, most memorable being The Cow who Fell in the Canal by Phyllis Krasilovsky and Minnie and Moo go to the Moon by Denys Cazet. To young me, I guess, cows were ungraceful creatures who end up in ridiculous circumstances due to their insatiable curiosity and lack of coordination. And they have spots and big cute heads and udders, so, fun to draw.

I also have to talk about to the movie The Little Vampire (2000) which I remember having a scene where the kid vampire had been sucking blood from all the farmer’s cows. Then, when the farmer went out to the barn the next morning, the cows were all hanging upside-down in the barn like bats. It was amazing.

That movie has to be where my subconscious cow and vampire connection came from. Expect a vampire picture book from me eventually.

I also love UFOs and I love the imagery of cows being abducted by UFOs and the kitsch of it all. I knew it would escalate to aliens as soon as I started.

I may make a longer post about it someday, but through this books’ inception, I really felt that the artwork needed to actually be all black and blue to have a point. I love when a book’s visual angle does heavy story lifting, like the visual experiment almost felt like the whole reason I was making it. I had to let go of that to let it grow it’s own legs and walk.

I usually do need a visual ruleset when I start making pictures. It makes the work exciting, like I have to crack it somehow, solve a puzzle with pieces and rules that I made up myself. The hard part convincing myself that I’m not breaking my own rules when I need to switch things up. IT DOES STILL FEEL LIKE CHEATING when I need to add in new colours to my flat, outline-less shapes in order to keep things readable.

This is very fun for me because I also hate puzzles.

After completing the whole book I stumbled across Dahlov Ipcar’s The Cat At Night. So it turns out, it was really good that I didn’t try to keep the colour gimmick going, because this book does it so well and makes PERFECT sense. Good title too. AND a tuxedo cat, unbelievable.

I did have a really good idea for the case cover, though.

And lastly, look at this pencil case Lian Cho got me. To be known is to be loved.

Thanks for reading! The Cow in the Dark at Night releases tomorrow!

-Jess 💙🧛‍♀️

Yeah thats the one! Here’s some inside art too.

But how’d we get here! Lets go back..

Oops, too far back!

I mentioned in my earlier post that this book was all construction paper. Here is the full scope of tools used in this book again in case you didnt see that (plus Photoshop for editing).

If you haven’t played with construction paper as a grown up I definitely recommend you make something with it. Maybe like, for a greeting or holiday card for somebody. Or do a whole book with it! I loved how soft this Crayola paper was, and all the little paper hairs you can see in there.

I made these pictures pretty small compared to the final size of the book! The book is printed at 11x18 for a full spread, but these guys are just 7x12. I feel like I did this because they would fit really easily in my scanner, or so that I could fit a whole spread on one sheet of paper. Probably something like that.

Because they had to get kinda blown up in print, the nice texture in the paper is bigger too, which is fun. Plus blowing up a smaller picture makes everything cuter and chunkier, as opposed to shrinking a bigger picture, where everything gets crispier and teenier. It gives it more naivety and less control, which is something I’m chasing. I’ll probably work tiny more often now.

You’re probably also thinking “hey how come the original collage is missing a bunch of stuff and the colours are different*. You’re right! Call it laziness or extra freedom, but I did a lot more in post-production than I did with The Bear Out There. A few reasons for that.

Reason 1, these are small and my hands are also small, but like, not that small. Making a bunch of minuscule cat eyes & paw details and stuff is tricky.

Reason 2, I didn’t have the exact colours of construction paper I needed, so I did a ton of colour editing in Photoshop after I’d scanned the original collages.

Reason 3, I like it like that! I like how loose I can be with the collage when I know I can mess with it a bunch later. I have more fun when I can be willy nilly with it. I actually just finished art a book where I exclusively collage in Photoshop after scanning each individual cut-out shape, and change the tones of the paper all digitally too. No glue in sight (don’t miss the sticky fingers, but I’ll definitely come back to glue sometime soon).

A fun example of this are the end papers, which start as a nighttime scene and then end on the same scene in the daytime. There’s a cow-shaped crop circle in it and I didn’t want to remake this perfect collage again, so I just swapped colours and plopped in my cow!

Don’t let yourself feel stuck thinking you have to have a lovely, physical, final, singular art piece for each spread to show off after the book is finished. Tons of designers and artists hack stuff together in post and have a great time doing it. Especially if the idea of pouring over a single piece for hours fills you with dread, because it definitely does to me. Huge respect to the painters and detail maniacs out there, you are built so different to me.

I hope this was neat to see! The book is out July 21, and if you want a signed & personalized copy (via bookstores in the US!) you can pre-order from Words on Warren or Books of Wonder. Otherwise, pre-order from your local indie or wherever you like buying books!

I’ll also be doing some events in NYC and around Toronto in a few months, which I’ll post about, so come and see me at those !

ALSO some bookstores will be carrying these AMAZING glow in the dark stickers! Unsure which ones managed to grab them but I hope you find some, they’re crazy. I believe Words on Warren got some, but if your store did too, let the people know 😎

Thanks and see you soOOOOoon :)

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I have a new book coming out! You might already know that. It’s called The Cow in the Dark at Night, and I love it so much. You are definitely allowed to be a fan of your own book.

A quick description of the story could be this:

“A curious cow sets herself loose upon the sleeping world, ready to explore all the nighttime has to offer. Covertly joined by a protective and dubious barn cat, our cow cheerfully (and cluelessly) encounters a cast of somewhat unsavory nocturnal characters during her travels. She must return to the barn before dawn, but, due to an intergalactic turn of events, she and her skeptical companion are soon faced with a much bigger, unexpected adventure.”

It’s got a cow, a cat, a vampire, burglars, aliens, spaceships, and a very well dressed scarecrow. In other words, it has all my favourite stuff.

I made this book with collage like my last one, “The Bear Out There”, except this one uses all construction paper! This is literally everything I used for it here (minus post-production editing in Photoshop)

Literally me:

I’ll make more posts about the inspiration for the book and how I made the art closer to when it comes out, which is…

JULY 21st 2026!

She’s up for preorder right now, if you like a preorder.

Thanks and talk soon 👽💙

Jess