From the Sketchbook:
Kim Smith
This CBC series features illustrators sharing their creative process and providing context for their amazing artwork.
Our artist this week is Kim Smith who has illustrated picture books of classic 80’s movies like Back to the Future and E.T. In this post, she discusses her art process for The Karate Kid, an adorable picture book based on the original movie.
“Sketching out colours is definitely one of my favourite tasks. I love taking the original source material and playing up the colours so the illustrations in the books are incredibly fun and dramatic to look at. . . . I took the colours from the poster and made them as bright and colourful as I could without them being garish. I always try a few different ideas, just to see what works best.”
“Drawing the karate scenes was one of the more challenging parts of illustrating this book. Not ever taking any karate lessons myself, it took a good amount of research to figure out the correct poses . . . . After watching a good amount of karate sparring on YouTube and reading how karate matches were scored, I drew a bunch of ideas of how Daniel and his opponent sparred. “
“For The Karate Kid, I knew what the real life character looked like, now I just needed to translate it into a cute 2d character. I take a giant stack of paper and just start sketching as many ideas as I can. I place all my favourites on one page.”
More of Kim Smith’s artwork can be found in the adorable picture book, The Karate Kid.
All sketches by Kim Smith for The Karate Kid TM & © 2019 CTMG Industries, Inc. All rights reserved.
