Happy Mail: A Picture Book Illustration Project

Featuring Stationery, of course.

About a year ago, I had the idea of illustrating the feeling of receiving happiness in the mail. Somehow this manifested into a grumpy dragon. Why is he grumpy? How will his grumpiness be resolved? Does his grumpiness need to be resolved?

I don’t know about you but I was OBSESSED with dragons as a kid. Unicorns and anything magical as well, of course, but Dragons were top tier. So it was extremely fun telling this story for the sake of my inner child if nothing else.

As I began to conceptualize this project I realized I could tell the whole story without saying a single word. I therefore present to you:

Happy Mail: A Tale of Unexpected Joy

By: Amber Payne, A Visual Story

Cover:

Page One:

Page Two and Three:

Page Four:

Page Five:

THE END. 💚

Back Cover:

Bonus: I did a cute letter pattern as potential end paper as if this were to become a real published children’s picture book.

But since this is technically too short to be published as a children’s picture book I thought I would share this with you and publish it here via substack. Obviously the dream is to become a children’s picture book illustrator so I’m hoping this shows a little bit of my vision!

To create this cute dragon and all of their relevant scenery, I hand painted most of the elements, such as all of the different dragon poses - including every single scale. The cute postman, the hedges and the flowers. Then I scanned them into photoshop and digitally drew in the rest. I share a little bit of that painting process here in a studio vlog from last year: Dragon Painting.

A photo of an original dragon painting:

And another quick painting process video, if you’re interested:

I think it is so SO important to have personal projects that really speak to you and who you are. This is a little bit of me in an illustrated story. I hope you enjoyed it!

Until next time,

🤍 Amber