Release the Wolves!
A new book, and how I made the illustrations.
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I have a new book coming out next week.
It’s called What Goes on Inside a Wolf Pack? and it was written by the wonderful Katie Yale, with illustrations by yours truly. The story follows a family of wolves in the Lamar River Valley in Yellowstone National Park over the course of an entire year. I previously wrote just a little bit about it here, but today I’m doing a deeper dive into how the book was made, and my process in illustrating it.
First, let’s get some business out of the way:
The book will be out on September 23rd, and you can pick it up most places you buy books. Including this place. And this one too, if it is most convenient for you. It’s technically for kids, but I’m guessing a lot of you adults will like it too.
Okay, now on with the show…
2024 was the year of the wolves, for me. I spent most of that year researching, sketching, drawing, and re-drawing lots of wolves. SO MANY wolves! It was a really intricate and ambitious project, and I can honestly say I am really pleased with how it turned out.
Are you ready to see it?
Yes?
Okay! Here is a very quick flip through the book to get an idea for the scope of work…
48 pages. Full color. Comic book style, with multiple panels on each page that tells the sequence of the story. After I finished all of my work I went back and counted the number of wolves that I drew across the whole book.
There are over 600.
Goodness gracious.
I had a lot of fun working on this project, but honestly I’ll be happy if I don’t need to draw another wolf for quite a while.
Shall we get into the nitty gritty of how this whole thing came to be? Every time I get finished with something like this, I always wish I had taken more photos and videos along the way. It’s difficult to remember to stop and do that when I have my head down working. But no worries. I still have a lot to show you, so let’s get on with it!