(adventure music) - I just love telling stories and what happens in a story and how I can show a character, a character's intent in a story.

In college, my instructors would try to make me do dark, very dark art and very Gothic kind of paintings, and I would be at home and I would think I'm doing this really dark painting and I'd bring it in.

And people would say, "Oh, it looks like a children's book."

And I enjoyed doing that kind of work, so my love in narrative, and then the fact that it kind of looked that way anyway, yeah, it was a natural fit.

My name is Lee White and I am a children's book illustrator.

Each time I get a new book project, I love reading through the story and seeing how I'm gonna tell the story and how it's different from the other stories I've done and what the settings are, so I start researching the place, and then what they might wear.

I mean, you're building a whole world, so it's not just the character.

What do they drive?

Are they on a bike?

Are they on a skateboard?

Where do they live?

And what's the family life like?

Typically the publishers has already bought the content and then it's given to me, and so I'm giving it in its entirety, and I just kinda need to go through and break it out line by line.

(door closes) How does the story break down in terms of page terms?

You know, what goes on one page and how do I savor something that might be a surprise for the reader?

So, I'll save that and try to make it land really hard on a page.

And so it's about pacing and really just controlling how a story is told.

I try to take a story and really get to the heart of what it's about.

And it can be these really raw emotions the fear of somebody leaving, a friendship that breaks up, a friendship that comes together.

Every story is different, and that's what makes every day different.

(adventure music) (brush scrapping) I finally came to watercolor because it offers experimental kind of aspect to it, I kind of know what's gonna happen, but I don't totally know what's gonna happen.

It's almost like a conductor while I'm painting.

(adventure music continues) I like having to paint splash on, and then having to react to it.

It may end up totally different than I thought it was going to and I love that process.

(dramatic music) "Sophie's Fish" was the first one that I did that I really, really liked.

And that was when I was just getting into watercolor.

(dramatic music continues) I'm combining media and there's watercolor, and their splashy kind of line work, and it really was a stylistic change for me.

(adventure music) Everything starts out traditional for me, but there's a speed element to the computer.

One of the things I do in many of my images is start traditionally and then I bring it into the digital world.

That's what I'm gonna do here by starting with this background kinda texture that we painted in watercolor.

So, I've got the digital texture pasted into my file and there's my drawing, and I'll use that as a base to start building the image.

It always ends up in the computer if it's going to be published for me, and then I ended up doing the final stages, adding lines, or patterns, or details.

So I try to use the traditional work for what it's good for, and then I use the digital work for what it's good for, and it really is the perfect combination.

You get the best of both worlds.

(adventure orchestral music) If I was just a technician and painting these things, just technical paintings, I couldn't do it every day, it'd drive me crazy!

But I really do show up for the characters and for the story to evolve.

(somber instrumental music) This one's called "Emma & the Whale," this was done digitally, but I built all of the textures using rolled ink on paper.

Some of the inspiration was from the Oregon Coast, all those little weathered kind of shacks.

I wanted to have that feel If you go to the coast in Oregon it's not Southern California.

There's every color, but it's more subdued, and I wanted the whole palette to be a little bit more subdued.

It's a rainy day, so you can see the rain kind of starting to happen but I didn't want to make it gray, I don't want it to feel depressing.

So I started to lean to these de-saturated greens for the skies, which is kind of an untypical color for the sky, but it just worked here in setting off this whole palette.

(adventure music continues) I've always been interested in telling my own stories but I was always so busy doing all these other books.

My son is spark that made me actually start putting the words to paper.

He was complaining his nightlight wasn't bright enough.

And I said, "Well, how bright does it need to be?

And he pointed at the moon, it was almost a full moon out that night.

He's like, "I want that."

I was like, "Oh, well what, how do we get that down here?

"I don't know how to do that."

And so we start talking about it and I said, "You know would you put a rope around it?

"Would you pull it into the room?

"What would you do it once it's here?"

(adventure flute music) I studio started sketching out some things, this boy pulling this moon down, and I said, that's the grain that I want, that's the kernel of the story that I want.

(adventure flute music continues) I made the moon a character, and I thought it could be interesting to explore the friendship between the moon and this boy with the narrative being a friendship that can't last.

"Secret Moon" by Lee White.

"Milo didn't like anything about the move.

"The new house had creaky floors and windows that rattled.

"The worst part was Milo had no friends at all.

"But that was about the change.

'Hi, said the moon, do you want to play with me?'

"Moon asked.

'Sure,' Milo replied.

"And off they went.

"They started with hide-and-seek, "although moon wasn't very good at it.

"Milo pretended not to see him.

'Shouldn't you be up in the sky?'

"Milo asked.

"But moon was having too much fun to worry about that."

I thought that would be nice to have the moon come down and have a very temporary friendship and what that means, and the emotions that a kid goes through.

"Milo didn't want moon to leave "and moon didn't want to go either.

"They were having too much fun together.

"New adventures beckoned, so off they went."

So it started out as just a nightlight problem became this whole story.

"Milo rode home with his new friends "even though he still had a house "with creaky floors and windows, it rattled.

"He was feeling a lot better about living here now, the end.