Are there places you'd like to return to?

The first version, painted in Corel Painter 11.

The word for this week's 'Illustration Friday' challenge is "Return." I've been thinking a lot lately about a place where I use to live. It was an old farm house in Washington state that was situated across the road from a meadow on the edge of a small forest. It was a place where I use to walk my dogs every day. I moved away from there 5 years ago when the relationship I was in fell apart and I've never felt as homesick for a place as I have for that house, meadow and forest. Lately I've begun to dream about it. For the past couple of months, I've had a dream almost every week that I have returned to that location. The house has since been sold and someone else now calls it home. I will probably never go back there, I think it would break my heart to go back and see someone else living in a place that I once felt was mine. But it did inspire me to create this image of an old woman returning to a favorite spot. Maybe it's a spot that she's never left, but returns to every day on walks with her dog.

I painted this illustration in Corel Painter 11 and then played around with it a bit, creating a new version by tweaking it in Photoshop using a Mister Retro filter to give it a sort of aged graphic feel. I then imported that version into Illustrator where, using the 'Trace' feature, I turned it into a vector image which simplified the shapes.  I saved that image as a tif file and then reopened it in Photoshop where I adjusted the colors.

The 2nd version, using the Mister Retro filter in Photoshop which added halftone dots.

The vector image version created in Illustrator and then adjusted in Photoshop.

Illustration Friday - Separated

I've been very busy getting ready for one more holiday craft fair so I only had time to do a quick sketch for this week's word which is 'Separated.' I'm not sure what made me think of this idea, other than that I know how painful it can be to be separated from an animal that you love.

At one point in the development of this sketch, I had the mother looking very mean and perturbed by her child's behavior. But I decided to go back to a more worried looking mom.  You can see the sketch of the mean mom below.

Illustration Friday - Mail

It's been a while since I've had time to do a posting, but now that I'm feeling a little more caught up, I can post my latest entry for Illustration Friday. This week's word is 'Mail.' The holiday season creates a heavier work load for a lot of people, but only a few of those people have to do that extra work out in the rain, sleet and snow. Your neighborhood post-person is one of those people. Even in this era of email, when fewer people are mailing Christmas cards, there are still lots of packages to deliver. When I read the email with this week's word, I had just returned from the post office and had waited in line for close to half an hour, so the mail service was on my mind. So this is my tribute to those men and women who make sure that the mail gets through in all kinds of weather.

In my first sketch, the mailman looked a bit too much like Bob Cratchit in "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol," which I had just finished watching before I made this sketch, so I revised it and made him into a slightly older man with a mustache and white hair.

Here is the cleaned up and revised sketch.

After finalizing my sketch, I placed it into a new Adobe Illustrator file and began to trace the shapes. You can see the start of that process in this screen shot.

Here is the illustrator file with all of the original colors in place.  When I got to this stage, I exported the file as a photoshop file (.psd) and then opened that file in Photoshop, where I ran the layers through some 'Mister Retro' distressing filters to give the colors a more vintage feel. I also added a hue/saturation adjustment layer where I changed the colors to give it a colder, more wintry look.

I then re-opened the file in Painter where I put in some of the line details using a leaky pen brush and some snow texture using some of Painter's chalk and pastel brushes.

After saving the file again as a .psd file, I re-opened it one more time in Photoshop where I ran it through a 'Machine Wash,' filter to give the snow and sky a more scuffed texture.  I also decided to crop the image. I'm having a hard time deciding which I like better - this final cropped version, or the version just proceeding it? Comments are always appreciated!

Illustration Friday - Spent

On top of keeping our dog out of trouble, I've been so busy with other projects that I'm late posting this week's 'Illustration Friday' challenge which is the word "Spent." I ended up going with my first thought which was to depict a scene of how a boy spent his saturday, in this case, reading his stash of old comic books. I guess you could say that this illustration is somewhat autobiographical, since that is how I spent many a Saturday as a kid, not to mention days when I was sick and stayed home from school.

The image was created digitally using Corel Painter's water color brushes and a leaky pen brush that I modified somewhat. Below is the original digital pencil sketch that I started with and used as my guide for the finished piece. Beneath that is an intermediate stage where you can still see the pencil sketch showing through.

Illustration Friday - Atmosphere

Back in April, I began an illustration of a little girl walking her dog on a foggy morning. I had a hard time getting the foggy atmosphere to look the way I wanted it, which got me frustrated, leading me to put the image aside, unfinished. When I saw that this week's 'Illustration Friday' word was "atmosphere," I immediately thought of this unfinished piece. This would be the perfect excuse for me to try tackling it again and to see if I could get it to look the way that I imagined it.

To the right, below the finished piece, you can see my first attempt, the way it looked when I stopped working on it back in April. One thing that I wasn't happy with in my original painting was the way the trees looked. For one thing they were too spindly and I also didn't like the foliage, it was too grainy and patchy.  If you compare this earlier image to the finished piece, you'll notice that besides bulking up the trees, I made some other changes - I added a car and some houses, I made the girl a little shorter, I simplified her sweater design and slightly altered the dog's pose.

Here is my original sketch, done back in April before I started the original painting. I started off working on a blue canvas (the whole piece was done digitally using Painter 11 software), thinking that the blue would be a good undercoat for fog. Instead, it just ended up making the image look rather cold. In the finished painting, I changed the color to a warmer tone to indicate that the sun was about to break through. You can see that the original sketch did not contain much in the way of detail.  I was going to be using a digital watercolor brush, so I was planning to just add the detail on the fly and hopefully I'd have some happy "accidents" with the digital watercolor process (which did happen to a certain extent).

Here is the image, after I had begun to revise it - changing the trees, shortening the girl, and adding the car. This version still shows the dog in his original pose.

Here I've begun to paint the girl and the dog. You can see that the dog is now in his new pose. On a separate layer, I've also added two houses. On a layer above them, I used a FX glow brush to diffuse the light coming from their windows.

Above all of the painting layers, I added another layer where I painted a fog. I did this by painting white paint using Painter's oily blender brush.  I put the paint on very thinly and then blended it with one of Painter's soft blending tools.  Blending on a layer with little or no paint on it will give you a sort of white hazy effect. I adjusted the effect by lowering the opacity of the layer and gently erasing portions of the paint with a large erasing brush set at a low opacity. Here you can see the image with the 'fog' layer turned on. From this stage, I continued to fiddle with the tree foliage and the opacity and density of the fog. The very last thing I did in Painter was to add the yellow dashed line down the middle of the street. After completing the image, I dropped all of the layers and saved the image as a tiff file. I opened this file in Photoshop and made an irregular shaped selection around the border, feathered the selection, inverted the selection (so that it would select the edges outside the image) and then deleted the edges of the picture. This gave the image a nice soft, undulating edge.

Illustration Friday - Star Gazing

Just a week or so ago, I created a piece for my portfolio that I called "The Stargazers." So, when I got my email on Friday containing this week's 'Illustration Friday' word I was pleasantly surprised. This week's word(s), by coincidence is "Star gazing." My already completed piece was a perfect fit.  There was just one problem - ever since I had completed the piece, in the back of my mind, I had this nagging dissatisfaction with the sky and the stars. I had gotten tired of working on it, and even though I wasn't completely happy with it, I called it complete and even put it up on my website. But when I saw this week's word, I decided I had to go back and redo the sky. I got completely re-energized and I'm so glad that I decided to tackle it again, because it turned out to be, in my opinion, so much better.

Besides not liking the sky's color and the arrangement of the stars and meteors, I was unhappy with the sky's oval shape. For comparison, you can see the original version on the left. In addition to repainting the sky, you might notice that I made some other changes as well. I decided to go with just one shooting star, I added a hint of the milky way in the sky, I added a cat in the background and I added additional shadows to the ground and figures. Those additional shadows that I created with Corel Painter's tinting brush, made a huge difference. In the original image, the characters and the grassy hill look like they are being lit by bright sunlight.  Adding a blue tint to the lower areas of the image unified the foreground with the sky and made the whole image appear more night-like.

Toys from Socks and Gloves

This post is part of the "I Made It Party at Everything Etsy." Click on the link to see what other people have been making.

As part of my ongoing search to find something that will sell in my Etsy store, I recently made some toys out of socks and gloves. I've always had a fondness for stuffed animals and I got the idea for making these from the wonderful book by Miyako Kanamori called Sock and Glove. The book has some very cute and easy to follow patterns for making all sorts of animals and dolls out of socks and gloves. If you think you can't sew and that it would be impossible for you to make something this cute, this book will probably change your mind. Believe me, if I can do it, you can. For a little extra help, I did download from a google search, some instructions on doing basic hand stitching - backstitching, running stitch etc. With my downloaded stitching instructions and this book, I made all of the following little critters.

My first attempt, following instructions from this book, is this dog. Even his shirt came from a pattern in the book (the author also shows you how to make little pants, a dress and a hat). I found the buttons in my mom's old sewing kit. The socks were purchased at Target. I made the mistake of purchasing tube socks which don't have a heel so I had to improvise a bit, but I think he turned out okay. He's kind of a lanky fellow, but I think I'll keep him.  He took me about two and a half hours to make and the shirt took almost another hour. If I can figure out my sewing machine, I think I could make the next one a lot faster.

My first attempt at making an animal out of two gloves is this funny little bunny who I've named Rose. I think the hardest part of making her, was sewing her head on to her body. Hidden underneath her removable turtleneck collar (the extra cuff from the second glove) there is a bit of Frankenstein style stitching on the back of her neck. But I think she turned out pretty cute. Her nose came from a jar of red buttons that I bought at a local antique consignment store.

My second attempt at a glove animal is this little dog, who I've named Elwood (don't ask me why, he just looks like an Elwood to me). Vintage buttons make up his eyes and nose and a little extra hand stitching gave him his quirky smile.  Once again, attaching his head to his body was the most difficult part.  No matter how hard I tried to get it on straight, he ended up with his head cocked up and a little to the right. To dress him up a little, I made him a collar out of a red satin ribbon.  I put a little velcro on the back of the collar so that it could be removed easily. To decorate the collar I made a small heart out of black polymer clay. After forming the heart, I dusted it with some gold metallic powder, embossed a smaller heart in the center and then baked it to fire the clay and make it nice and durable. I think the little heart makes a nice touch, like he's wearing a license tag.

My two glove animals are for sale in my Etsy store. Since he was my first attempt, I decided to keep the Sock Dog, but I've already got plans to make some more.

By the way, this post is part of the "I Made It Party at Everything Etsy." Click on the link to see what other people have been making.

Illustration Friday - Ahead

This week's Illustration Friday word was "Ahead." The first thing that came to my mind was someone on a journey, not knowing what was around the bend, what was ahead of them.  But the word could also be used in the context of someone who is ambitious or striving, someone who wants to get ahead.  I decided to go with something along the lines of my first idea.  A dark, mysterious forest came to mind next.  From there I thought of a boy out walking his dog, the dog has gotten ahead of him and is about to enter the mysterious forest.  The boy doesn't know what lies ahead, but he's worried that his dog is about to disappear (Click the image to enlarge it).

I started this illustration as I usually do, with a sketch.  As I sketched, I found myself spending so much time working on the trees and the forest that I began to worry that I might not be able to do them justice when it came time to painting them.  That's when I decided to do the whole thing in black and white as a digital pencil drawing.  I rarely work in black and white, so I thought of this as a challenge.  I spent a lot of time trying to get the boy and the dog right.  I drew at least three different heads and countless expressions for the boy until I finally came up with one that I was satisfied with.  For the dog, I originally had made up something out of my head but there was something that just didn't seem quite right about the pose.  Finally, after reworking it over and over, and still not being satisfied, I decided to reference a photo of my dog Lucy who died three years ago.  She was part Australian Shepherd and loved to run into our nearby forest. It became much easier when I found a photo of her with a pose similar to what I was aiming for. So this is my tribute to Lucy and the many times I chased after her into the woods.

I tried to convey a sense of mystery in this drawing and some dramatic tension, I hope I succeeded.