Illustration Friday - Breakfast (Finished Version)

For those of you who have been nice enough to follow the progress of this illustration, that I created as part of the July 16th Illustration Friday challenge, it is finally finished. The word to illustrate was 'breakfast,' and I chose to create a family of orangutans having their morning meal in their brightly colored kitchen. My inspiration came from some of the classic Little Golden Book illustrators, people like Feodor Rojankovsky, Mary Blair, J.P. Miller and Aurelius Battaglia.  I chose my color scheme based on what I felt would be complimentary colors to the orangish-browns of the orangutan's fur. I tried to stick to a limited palette, but I did use different shades and values of the colors I chose. For those who may have missed the original posting, I'm also including my original sketch. The main difference between the sketch and the finished piece is that I decided not to try and do a true perspective on the floor. Instead I changed it to a straight-on view of a checkerboard pattern. I felt that would be more in tune with the stylized look of the illustrations in a Little Golden Book.

Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to come back and see the finished result.  Comments are always appreciated.

Illustration Friday - Breakfast (Work in Progress Part 2)

Yesterday, I posted what I had done so far on this week's 'Illustration Friday' word, which is "Breakfast." I still have a lot more to do but here's what I've accomplished since the last post. I spent most of my time working on their faces and putting some shading into their clothes and various props. As you can see, I still haven't tackled the rest of the cabinets and the cookie jar, plates, bowl, etc sitting on top of the cabinets. I also have to paint in the food items on the table.  It wouldn't be much of a breakfast if I left the food out.  I hope to have this finished by Saturday.

Illustration Friday - Breakfast (Work in Progress)

I've been a little under the weather this week and haven't felt like sitting at my computer for very long, so I'm posting this week's Illustration Friday challenge ('Breakfast') as a work in progress. If you're interested in seeing the final piece, bookmark my blog and check back in a few days, hopefully it will be completed by your next visit.

The version you see here is shown displayed with both the color palette that I'm using, and the layer with my sketch on it, turned on.

For many families, breakfast time is a rather rushed time of day. Thinking about that, led me to think about creating a somewhat chaotic scene, but since I had also recently been studying some of the Little Golden Book art of J.P. Miller, Feodor Rojankovsy and Mary Blair, I also got excited about doing the scene in the style of a vintage Little Golden Book. I toyed with the idea of mixing children and various animals, but then, after looking at some pictures of Orangutans on the internet, I decided to create a scene of an Orangutan family breakfast. Orangutans have great facial expressions and their babies are some of the cutest babies in the entire animal kingdom, so they were a perfect choice.

Before starting, I made two sketches in my sketchbook, one in ink and one in pencil.  There were things I liked about each sketch, so I ended up combing elements from both of them.

From these two rough sketches I created a more refined, finished sketch. You can see that as I started painting, I began making some changes.  For one, I decided against doing the floor in perspective. Perspective has never been one of my strong points and I didn't want to get hung up on trying to make it look right, so I decided to "flatten" out the floor. I felt this also gave me the leeway to take some license with the shape of the fallen over chair and the lines making up the window in the background. One of the most recent changes I made was to have the Orangutan who is half hiding under the table, reach up, trying to sneak another piece of toast.

In this last graphic, you can see what the image looks like with the sketch layer and color palette layers turned off.  This is pretty much where the image stands at the moment. With the exception of the stove and the rest of the cabinets, the colors are pretty much all blocked in, now I just have to start adding some detailing and shading. Hopefully, I'll have it finished in the next day or so.