The Many Adventures of Jude the Dude

 I often think about how Jude changed my life. He seriously took everything I thought I knew, everything I thought I was, and everything I thought I would ever be and changed it completely and for the better. He is an amazing kid. He inspires me daily, he inspires me to be a better mom, to be a better person and to think outside of the box. His creativity opened my creativity and took it to a whole new level. He believes I can do anything, and that kind of faith is hard to disappoint so when the kid has a request I try to make it a reality in the best way that I can. So when he wanted to make a book with his drawings, I said “we can do one better, let’s make a book starring you!” He came up with his own storyline, poses, drawings, and I simply edited it with him by my side. (and his approval) He is super proud of his book (which is being sent to the printers now) so I thought I would give you a quick rundown of how we made this happen.

 We started by taking his pictures in our little studio set up, this can be done really easily by hanging white paper, you can buy a roll of bright white paper from most camera stores for about 20 bucks or less and they are huge rolls. (which are great for kids to color on too)

 For the best results you want to use as much light as possible, natural light is great even if you hang the paper outside. Then Jude drew all his pictures on plain white paper and I scanned them into the computer magically if you ask Jude, but in reality I used a scanner, he pushed the button.

 Then I used photoshop to make the magic happen, I am sure there are other editing programs out there as well, basically I layered in his art work and pictures of him resizing when needed and deleting background so they came together. When all the backgrounds (like for the drawings and photos) are white it makes layering and merging much easier.

 Then I added text. I thought about writing word for word what came out of his mouth, sometimes it’s comical and it would be fun to see how it changes over the years. Then I decided to paraphrase instead. We keep all of his school journals and emails he sends out that are his own words that I thought we would go with the story over his exact wording.

 The pictures, drawing, editing and all took a few hours spread out over a few days. We did it all together and since he is 6 it was too much for all one sitting.

It was a lot of fun creating with Jude. He is full of ideas and already working on his second and third book. I love anything I can do to keep creativity and imagination alive and well.

Details:
Jude is wearing his Tree Climber Trousers (he basically lives in them)
The shirt is a pattern (soon to be released) made in a knit I scored in L.A. and LOVE.
No shoes, and dirty socks because that is how 6 year old super heroes roll.