THE BOOK
These days, time and quality are essential in creating an illustration. Having the right resources at your fingertips can allow you as an artist to produce the desired outcome more efficiently and effectively. The Drawing Board Journals can be the tool needed to help you speed your creative process along.
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This "journal" is a compilation of helpful tips gathered and created along the years to guide the visual storyteller through illustration. It contains useful information that is organized in a way making it easy to follow, including some guidelines in creating effective compositions, utilizing bookmaps, posing characters, and handling backgrounds and props within the drawing. It also presents a method of simplifying basic anatomy of humans and a few animals to be able to sketch out a desired pose quickly and with less struggle.
These notes are shared in the hopes of allowing fellow artists to more easily express their creativity and in turn share their unique storytelling with others.

THEY SAY ABOUT IT
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In every chapter Denise presents a different area
and she does that with a disarming simplicity. Her explanations – always accompanied by sketches
and drawings – are so linear and clear that it gives you the illusion that it’s really easy to create the perfect illustration.
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Trust me, it is not.
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Should I say that I learned a lot reading this book? Yes, that’s exactly what happened, cross my heart. Denise it’s incredibly talented! Her drawings are beautiful, full of life and above all clear and intelligent, explaining the different rules and possibilities. They are more than what you could hope for to approach illustration with enthusiasm and passion.
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Wow! The Drawing Board Journals is a treasure of insights, tips, and a wealth of information on how to illustrate a book. From layouts, to character design, to backgrounds, and everything in between, a seasoned pro or a new student can gain knowledge and a full understanding on how to structure and execute a great book.
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ELISABETTA MELARANCI,
ILLUSTRATOR AND COMIC BOOK ARTIST
BRUNO BOZZETTO,
ANIMATION DIRECTOR AND FILMMAKER
JUNE FUJIMOTO, ILLUSTRATOR AND
KEY ASSISTANT
ANIMATOR
BIO

Denise Shimabukuro is an artist specializing in storybook illustration. Born and raised in Hawaii, she moved to California where she worked on staff for some of the major entertainment companies. Her experience also includes character design for animation, and her activity extends to T-shirt and jewelry designs.
Denise has used her experience to train artists in Los Angeles, Milan, Paris, and London, and her work is featured in hundreds of children’s books published world-wide.
She now resides in Milan, Italy, with her husband, where she continues her work as a freelance artist.
STORE

NEWLY AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
A few years ago I was finally able to make a dream come true, I had finished preparing my first book and was about to deliver the files to my self-publsihing publisher. The work for preapring the content and creating the design, and to put everything on the page was long and difficult, and despite I delivered ready to print files, the publisher charged me for the same price as if they had to design them. Regardless that was fair or not, I accepted that and the book was finally on sale!
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But soon a big surprise would have hit me. A few months after the publication, I inquired about the small percentage that the publisher was supposed to pay off the sales, but didn't get any answers even after multiple emails... After some reserach, I found out many other authors hadn't received anything and that Dog Ear Publishing, was on the red list because they fooled many people and kept all the money from the book sales. So, I couldn't do anything else but break the contract and retire the book from the market, to prevent further stealing. The thing that I was more sad about was not being able to share this work with all of you anymore.
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But now, I have been finally able to re-publish the book and it is available on Amazon!
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