A Tale of 4: Enter Ethan Picture Book

When I first fell in love with my ex-wife I documented the experience with a fully illustrated book. I presented it to her when I proposed. The years that followed kept the tradition going. I made a book when we were expecting our first son, and a book about Robby (my oldest son) as he experienced his first year.

Last year we were divorced and it rekindled my desire to finish out this series of books. A Tale of 4: Enter Ethan is the final installment in the 5-book series. The story revolves around Ethan (my youngest son) and the shenanigans that surrounded his first couple years of life.

Below I included the entire book and behind-the-scenes look at what planning a book like this looks like.

-Josh

Click any image to view in full screen and swipe through the gallery

Behind-the-scenes stuff

This is a diagram I sketched out to brainstorm the different family events that occurred during his life to help me remember what I could draw from (pun intended).

Here I took the idea from just rough words into pictures. A LOT of thinking happens at this stage about how to convey progress in the story. The first couple of books I made in this series lean toward being a scrapbook of memories. With this book, I really wanted it to tell a story. Hopefully I achieved my objective.