Penelope’s Bully

Project Overview

Penelope’s Bully by Andre Gatling weaves two parallel stories of being judged for difference into a single, moving friendship. Penelope arrives in her new neighbourhood hoping for new beginnings, only to face bullying for being different. When she meets Chloe, a homeless pit bull puppy treated with the same unfair suspicion, the connection between them is immediate and real. When Chloe is taken to a shelter, Penelope must find the courage to advocate for her friend — and in doing so, begins to change how the whole community sees them both. Gatling writes with genuine warmth, and the parallel between a bullied child and a misunderstood breed is handled with care rather than heavy-handedness.

The illustration challenge was making that parallel visible without being heavy — Penelope and Chloe needed to reflect each other’s experience through expression and body language, so that readers felt the connection before the story named it.

Role

The illustration challenge was making the parallel between Penelope and Chloe visible without being heavy-handed. Both needed to reflect each other’s experience of being unfairly judged through expression and body language alone, so readers felt the connection between them before the story ever named it outright.

Full illustration across the book covered character design for Penelope, Chloe the pit bull, and the neighbourhood cast, parallel emotional storytelling through human and animal character expression, visual storytelling and scene development, and print-ready file preparation for Mascot Books.

Character Design

Before a single page is illustrated, I develop the main characters in full — defining their proportions, expressions, and personality. This is the foundation that keeps your characters recognizable and consistent across every scene, every lighting condition, and every emotional moment in the project.

Process

Every project follows this same structured path, so you always know where we are and what comes next. You review and approve at the sketch stage and the line art stage — nothing moves to color until you’re happy. By the time the final spread is rendered, there are no surprises.