I now draw over my painted rough with a pencil, refining further as I go. Some of the lines will appear to be in the right place; these I draw over with my ink pen. Eventually, by trial and error, the whole drawing gets inked in and I end up with a drawing approaching how I want the illustration to look. I say 'approaching' because the refinement doesn't end there - the positioning of each character on the page, along with the expressions and where each hoof, ear, even where the eyeballs are placed are all important factors which underpin the finished painting and so improvements continue to be made. For example, I may want to try raising a leg a bit higher to see if it looks more expressive. To do this I rip off a leg-shaped bit of paper, redraw the leg and stick it over the old one in the new position. If I like the result it stays, if not I rip it off and go back to the original positioning. I end up with a patchwork of paper layers with drawings on. (It’s hard to see the actual layers in this scan but you can make out where their edges lie). The top layer, obviously, has the line on it which I have decided is in the right position. Once everything is in the right place for every illustration in the book I’m ready for the painting stage.