I’ve written about color scripts before—where I create one big color study that includes every page in a book.  I grabbed the idea from the animated movie world.  Color is a powerful tool for telling your story: setting the mood and indicating time of day.  In The Really Awful Musicians I wanted everything to take place in 24 hours, just like classical plays were plotted.  Oedipus Rex is one that comes to my mind—all the action takes only one day to happen.

The color script helped me to underscore that idea.  The first scenes explain how the king bans all music, then I introduce the musician Piffaro just as the sun is setting.  Off he goes on his wild nighttime escape from the kingdom, meeting another musician early next morning.  They in turn meet other musicians throughout the day; the plot resolves itself by late afternoon and the happy ending is in the castle that evening.

In my color script you can see little arrows I’ve drawn to show where the sun is shining his light on the scenes as the characters travel along.  All this is not meant to be important to reader—but by showing the passage of time I hope I’ve added a little bit of urgency to the story.

More of that jacket art for The Really Awful Musicians.  Before I begin my painting, I work up a small color study.

Here are the thumbnail sketches for The Really Awful Musicians jacket art, and the tight sketch.

Here are sketches of most of the characters in Really Awful Musicians.  Piffaro is the little guy with the pipe & drum, Espresso the skinny dude playing a lute, Serena on harp, Fortissimo on sackbut and Lugubrio on bass recorder.  Piffaro is the Steady Eddie main character providing an anchor for the other extreme musicians who are too fast, too slow, too loud and too soft.