Behind the Scenes: Shakespeare's Gifts

Sketches showing a bit of my process

Hey everyone!

So I promised you a behind the scenes post on Wednesday, but I’m afraid fate had other plans. A cracked tooth on Tuesday night led to me doing the bare minimum (which included crying) for two days while my nerve was exposed to the unforgiving air. Got some temporary relief now. Fun times.

ANYWAY here is a BTS look at something I wrote to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday on Thursday.

First I started by sketching, doodling and brainstorming ideas. 

As you can see I used a very basic version of the mind map. Usually these can extend further. (Remember: dental pain=bare minimum).

Once I looked through that list I played with some of the ideas, like so:

I tried the theme one first, thinking it might be a fun take to try. And maybe it does work, but it wasn’t working for me that day, so I moved on to the next topic.

This one was little better. I thought that using famous quotes to inspire the birthday invites was an interesting premise. Ultimately I realized it was a little too flat and tried something else.

I really liked the cards idea. When I sketched out a few I knew this would be a definite option for later. Drawing is always fun and images help me bring the jokes to life. However, I still felt a little out of my depth with the one-liners. I’m not good at writing them so it’s always a risk to do something where they carry the whole piece.

My last brainstorm used one of my favorite topics from the mind map. Right away my brain was full of ideas and I decided to make a bigger list to see how far I could go.

Then I picked several from the list and wrote a draft, pulling moments from the plays and combining them with facts about Shakespeare. Because I wasn’t limited to one line AND got to draw it felt more complete, more me. Eventually I put the draft aside and began to finalize the illustrations. (Note: A GIF of the drawing process should play below. But if it doesn’t load, check it out on the Substack site)

When I went back to the actual writing I edited more, including taking out a section that didn’t feel as strong as the others. It’s hard to kill your darlings, but weak jokes can hurt the finished version, so it’s important to do so.

Then I put it altogether and published this piece.

Thank you for reading!

Kyrie