I don’t do much in the way of visualizing characters when I’m writing, but I think most readers are more visual than I am, and they tend to appreciate at least a little description.  But except for the major characters, I hadn’t done much description of anyone in the book, and there were a ton of minor characters whose names were probably mentioned once—primarily Delia’s classmates in her fairy school.  So I decided I should try to draw them so I could get an idea of what she’s seeing every day.

So here’s my “fairy class picture day,” ignoring of course that they lived in a time without cameras. Haha.

The teachers are the ones standing on the stage, and the fairy students are all on the ground—I drew the graduating class of that year.

Fairies are obviously a pretty homogenous bunch, given how consistently they seem to have curly blonde hair and light skin.  A few of them have a little more red or a little more brown in their hair, but it’s rare.  So you can see why my protagonist sticks out a bit.  (That and she’s tiny because she’s four years younger than the next youngest student.  And, well, a few other things.)

I had a lot of fun figuring out what everyone looks like.  It lets me flesh them out more when I write about them in the book.