Illustration Friday - Perspective

Here's another of the challenges from the Illustration Friday site.  This time the word was 'perspective.'  Since I've recently been reading a lot of fairy tales written by contemporary authors, and many of the stories have been set in the city, I decided to do my perspective from a pixie's point of view as if they were flying over a big city.  Also recently, I've been looking at some of the work of Johnny Gruelle, who is best known for his Raggedy Ann stories but who also illustrated some fairy tales. I've always loved his charming illustration style, so I decided to try and give my little pixies a Johnny Gruelle feel to them.

You can click on the image to see it larger.

Day 4 Work in Progress

I woke up this morning after only getting about 3 hours sleep due to feeling sick all night and decided that since my symptoms were still with me that I should go to the doctor.  I called him this morning as soon as his office opened and luckily, I was able to get in right away.  To make a long story short, I'm now on some anti-biotics, which will hopefully fix me up and enable me to feel like getting back to work.

Anyway, I didn't work on this at all today and only got a little bit done yesterday.  Here's the progress I made yesterday in the short time I worked on it after posting the day 3 entry:  Cleaned up the door frame, cleaned up the box on the desk that is holding the statue, added a layer of preliminary shadows.

I'm looking forward to feeling better so that I can get back to this and get it finished.

Day 3 Work in Progress

I was hoping to have this finished by now but I've been feeling under the weather all day and have not felt like working on it. Here's what I accomplished yesterday - started adding detail to the books in the bookcase, as well as the objects on the desk and finished detailing the red chair.  I also worked on the pictures on the wall.  Adding shading and detail to all of the books took me much longer than I had anticipated and I've still got quite a few more to go, but hopefully I'll finish up the next time I sit down to work on it.

Day 2 Work in Progress

Here is my progress report on the painting I posted yesterday. First, you might notice that I expanded the size of the canvas a bit so that I would have more working room around the edges.  I did this by adding 60 pixels to each edge.  From there I continued to work on adding details.  I gave some form and definition to the taxidermied animal on the top of the bookcase, I refined the books on the bookcase, I painted in a crystal ball on one of the bookcase shelves, I put detail and texture on to the dark green Victorian sofa, began to add some detail to the red chair, I added details to the trunk and crate that are behind the boy, in the foreground I painted in a glowing lantern, I threw in some spider webs and I added more detail and shadows to the boy.

Today, I will continue working on the details - the books in the bookcase still need a lot of work, the items on the desk need to be cleaned up, as does the box and the creature statue that the boy has discovered.  I will also finish up the red chair, add detail to the pictures hanging on the wall, put in some more cobwebs and play with the lighting and shadows.  Then I should be just about finished.

Work in Progress

Yesterday I began work on a new painting.  I guess I would have to say it was inspired by the John Bellairs book that Mark and I are reading to one another at night.  It's called the "Dark Secret of Weatherend."  I'm not illustrating anything from the book (there is no scene like it in the book), but reading this spooky book gave me the idea of trying to create a spooky image for children, an illustration that hopefully will look like it might have come from a children's book.  To start, I began by doing a quick pen study in my sketchbook.  As I worked, I got the idea of a young boy in an old abandoned house, searching for something. He gradually begins to notice that he is being watched by something in the doorway.  You can see my original sketch at the right.  It is actually just a thumbnail sketch, but it was enough to give me an idea of the scene and its composition.

As I began to develop the painting I decided that the item that he has discovered in the box on the desk would be a small statue of a man-like creature. As he turns around, he discovers that the thing watching him from the doorway is identical to the statue he has just discovered.

Maybe at some point I'll attempt to write a story to go with this, but for now I'm only interested in developing this scene. I'm hoping that the final result will be atmospheric, a bit spooky but also somewhat humorous. The color image that I'm posting today is the work in progress. I still have a lot to do on it.  Basically what you see is the image with the colors blocked in. I have just begun to add some detail. Now it's just a process of smoothing out the shapes, adding lighting and shadows and of course, a lot more detail.

Illustration Friday - Propagate

Illustration Friday is a site for illustrators where each Friday a new word is posted and the challenge is to come up with an illustration for that word.  This week's word is "Propagate."  Since I think I first learned this word from my father, who was a plant pathologist, I decided to do a drawing that reminded me of him and how he taught me to propagate plants by taking cuttings.  The drawing was done using Painter XI utilizing a number of different brushes - liquid ink, soft conte crayon, watercolor, colored pencil and the "real" variable width pen.  I tried to do the image in a style reminiscent of a 1950's or 60's children's illustration.