Pen and Ink - Digital Style Part 5, Reunion with Cooroo

November 15th will be the first year anniversary of starting this blog, and this post, that you're now reading, happens to be my 90th entry. When I started it, I had no idea whether or not I'd be able to keep it going or if I'd be able to find enough to write about. Participating in the "Illustration Friday" challenges has provided me with quite a few entries and for the rest I've either written about favorite children's book illustrators or posted examples of my own work. This will be another of those posts featuring one of my new pieces, with information on how I developed the piece.

For those of you who've been following this blog, you may remember my previous entries where I've featured some digital pen and ink work that I did based on my interpretations of scenes from the children's book "The Hounds of the Morrigan," by Pat O'Shea.

The scene that I chose for this illustration comes toward the end of the book, when the children are reunited with the fox Cooroo, who helped them in their adventures, only now they have to win Cooroo's trust back, since after their return from the land of fairy, he no longer remembers them. Here is the passage from the book: "And from time to time they would both meet a dog-fox; the same one every time, they were sure. He would stand and let them come quite close before walking away. They knew that he was not afraid of them at all. Every now and then he would stand still for a long time, and they would all three look at each other with puzzlement and affection and feelings of knowing that could not be explained by the children. If ever they went on a picnic, he would appear. They would throw food near him which he accepted and ate with perfect ease. On winter days, they particularly went for his sake and he was always waiting for them. In time, to their delight, they found that he trusted them enough to eat the food from their hands and even let Brigit stroke him."

Here is an early stage of the image where you can see the layer with the digital pencil sketch. I've also begun to ink in one tree, which I had on its own separate layer. The great thing about working digitally is that you can have different elements of the drawing on their own layers, which makes it very easy to move them around. In this case, I eventually ended up reversing this tree by horizontally flipping it and then decided to move it to the right side of the image.

Here you can see the tree in its new position on the right side of the image. I have also added a stone wall, and in the sky, a sun and some clouds. Plus, I moved the fox a little closer to the children and added another tree on the left.

In this image, I've inked in the outlines for the children and the fox and continued adding some detail to the background.

In this image, you can see that I have begun to ink in the fox's fur.

I decided to add in some very dark shading to make the two children and the fox stand out. I've also added another group of trees on the left and some grasses. Up until this point, I had worked on the drawing every day for almost a week. I had begun to get a little tired of making all of those small cross-hatching lines and was starting to get discouraged about the overall look. Because of this, I decided to put it aside for a couple of weeks. I finally went back to it yesterday. Once I managed to get into a good rhythm, I was able to finish it fairly quickly.

Originally, I intended to have this scene take place on a bright sunny day, but as I continued to ink it, it began to look more like a moonlit night. I think that was due in part to the rings I had drawn around the sun. I also had very little shading on the trees on the far horizon. This made them look like they were being lit by the moon. By adding more shading to the sky and the distant trees and eliminating some of the darkest shadows on the figures (especially on the girl), I think it now looks like a partly cloudy day time scene, which I think I like better. 

Pen and Ink - Digital Style Part 4, Mawleogs

Over the past month, I've been developing my black and white portfolio by drawing scenes from the children's novel, "The Hounds of the Morrigan," by Pat O'Shea. It's quite a wonderful children's fantasy based on Celtic mythology and has two very likable protagonists, 10 year-old Pidge and his 5 year-old sister Brigit. In this scene, the children, who are being pursued by the hounds belonging to the Morrigan, the Goddess of Battle and Destruction, meet the friendly spider Mawleogs who aids them in their journey to find the blood-stained pebble that is needed to stop the evil queen from regaining her full powers.

I originally envisioned depicting this scene from behind the children, looking over their shoulders so that the viewer could get a good look at Mawleogs. But with this layout, the spider would need to be further back in the scene and he would end up being so small, that most of his facial detail would be lost and therefore the scene would lose some of its impact. I did do a sketch of it though, which you can see below. Below it, is a close-up sketch of the spider, Mawleogs. He is described in the story as wearing a shirt with a ruffled neck and cuffs, black knee britches, knitted stockings, buckled hornpipe shoes, and a little hard hat.


In this part of the story, which takes place in Ireland, the children have crossed over into Tír-na-nÓg (the otherworld or Fairy land) so I'm guessing that the hard hat that Mawleogs was wearing might not be what we think of as a hard hat. Considering that he's described as a gentleman, I pictured the hat more like the type that you might see a leprechaun wearing. I had to dig for some reference to find out what a hornpipe shoe was.

After I decided to show the children from the front, and Mawleogs from the back, I came up with this sketch. After spending quite a bit of time working on this composition, I still wasn't happy with it. The children looked too stiff and I felt the layout lacked interest. It was too straight-forward and it was not matching the vision I had in my head of how I wanted this to look. 


So, I revamped it one more time. This time I decided to tilt the scene a bit and show it from slightly above, as if you were up in the tree with Mawleogs, looking down on the children.


To help me in the perspective and the shading of the scene, I set up two figures in Poser, which you can see to the right. As far as using Poser, I only know the basics. I don't use it as often as I use to, but it still comes in handy once in a while to help with a tricky perspective. Below, is the final pencil sketch that I worked from, based on this new viewpoint. I feel this layout works much better and gives the scene some dynamic visual interest and movement. 


One of my favorite children's book illustrators is Erik Blegvad (who I've written about before in this blog) who has illustrated many wonderful books using pen and ink.  While drawing the children in my illustration and doing the cross-hatching, I constantly referred to some of his illustrations, in particular some that he did for the Mary Norton book "Bed-knob and Broomstick." 

Pen and Ink - Digital Style Part 3, The Fox in the Wheat Field

In Part 2 of my posting on my digital pen and ink work, I posted a work in progress - a picture of a fox in a wheat field. It is one of the illustrations I'm doing as part of a challenge to myself to come up with some black and white 'spot' illustrations for the children's book "The Hounds of the Morrigan," by Pat O'Shea. It's also a way to add some much needed black and white examples to my portfolio.

This image is an illustration based on this passage from the book: "The fox coughed delicately and was, to all appearances - instantly very deeply absorbed in studying a splendid green beetle with polished wing-cases and remarkable antennae, who was taking a casual ramble up a wheat stalk." This is a scene that follows the introduction of Cooroo, the fox that befriends the two children of the story, Pidge and Brigit. The fox has been conversing with the children when he is distracted by the beetle. It's just a short paragraph, the beetle doesn't feature in the story, but by including a description of the fox's interest in it, the author gave me a clear sense of the fox's similarity to a dog. My dog is always being distracted by the smallest little things, so I thought this short scene was a beautiful way for the author to tell us something about the fox's personality.

Since I tend to work in spurts and stops, between interruptions and distractions, it's kind of hard to tell how long I worked on this piece, but I estimate it was probably between 20 and 30 hours. The fox's fur was the most time consuming part of the illustration and also the most intimidating, but I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.

Pen and Ink - Digital Style Part 1

I have recently begun sending out postcard samples of my artwork to various children's book and magazine publishers. Approximately every two weeks since June, I've sent out another batch, so far a total of 59 cards. Some of the people I've addressed my cards to spoke at the SCBWI conference that I went to in New York last January. To those people, I've sent new postcards every time I've sent out another batch. So by now, if they've kept them, they have a small portfolio of my work. No word back from any of them so far, which isn't surprising considering how many submissions I'm sure they receive.

So, how does this relate to my subject heading, "Pen and Ink - Digital Style?" While going through my portfolio, selecting art to send out in postcard form, I realized that I have very little in the way of black and white artwork. I've often read that when putting together a portfolio, it's important to show black and white work as well as pieces in full color. A lot of children't chapter books, middle grade books and even some young adult books use black and white illustrations, either interspersed throughout a story or as chapter headings. The 'Harry Potter' books are a good recent example of this.  At the beginning of each chapter, there is a small 'spot' illustration. I enjoy seeing those types of illustrations in books and I always love it while reading when I come across the passage in the chapter that the illustrator has chosen to illustrate.

I am currently reading a children's book called 'The Hounds of the Morrigan,' by Pat O'Shea. It's quite a long book (over 600 pages), a fantasy with its roots in Celtic mythology and folklore. One of the things that I like about it, besides the author's sense of humor, are the two main characters, Pidge and Brigit. These brother and sister protagonists are very likable and don't have a trace of the cynicism that seems to have crept into so many contemporary depictions of children. I'm sure children are more cynical and jaded today than they were when I was a kid, but seeing children depicted without these traits, gives this book a charming, old-fashioned quality that makes it feel like I'm reading a book that came out during my childhood (which was in the late fifties and early sixties), rather than something that was written in the late nineties.

I am reading a mass market paperback edition of this book.  There are no illustrations in the book, but as I've been reading it, I've begun thinking that it might be a fun personal challenge to try and create some 'spot' chapter heading illustrations for it. I love looking at intricate pen and ink work (see my blog dedicated to pen and ink work from Dec. 12, '09 and my posting about Erik Blegvad from August 16th of this year) and I love working in the medium, even though it's been several years since I've done so.  For this project I decided to get out my rapidograph pens and see what I could come up with. But, when I pulled my pens out of storage, I found that they were badly in need of cleaning. I knew it was going to take some time to get them back into working order, so I decided to start my drawing as a digital sketch.

The first image I decided to do was of an oak tree that is described in chapter twenty-three: "At length they saw the biggest tree they had ever seen, growing at a distance of twenty feet or more in from the rim of the chasm. Its trunk was a bulk and a mass and a swelling; its branches were a billowing and a spreading and a stretching; its height was pride and power."

I knew I was going to need some reference for this drawing, so I took my camera on one of my many walks with my dog and chose this oak tree that is growing in our local park.  It is a big tree, but it is no where near the size of the tree described in the book. I basically used my photo for reference on how the branches grow and the fall of light and shadow on the foliage. In my drawing, I beefed up the tree, adding girth to its trunk and width to its span.

To the right is my original pencil sketch which I scanned and used as a rough guide. You can see that the tree in my original pencil sketch is rather squat. I didn't leave myself enough room in my sketchbook for the height of the tree, so, after scanning it, I improvised and added some additional foliage and branches to the top. I've also included some of the stages of development of the final drawing. In some of these you can see the sketch, which I had on a separate layer, showing through.

As I continued to add more and more detail to this digital pen and ink drawing, I decided to keep it digital and not try and duplicate it using my rapidograph pen.  I spent between 15 and 20 hours working on this drawing. It is the most intricate and detailed drawing I've done using Painter's digital pen brush, but I'm happy with the way it turned out, so I am already planning to do more. I already have a couple of more illustrations in mind that I want to do for my "Hounds of the Morrigan" project. I'll be posting them here as I complete them.