Illustration Friday - Kernel

The 'Illustration Friday' word for this week is "Kernel."  A corn kernel is the first thing I thought of, the second thing was popcorn. I abandoned the popcorn idea and instead drew a little mouse clutching a kernel of corn. I know people who cringe at the thought of rodents and I know they are a big problem for farmers when they get into their stored grain, but I decided to put those thoughts out of my mind and concentrate on creating a cute little mouse. I created this image using Painter 12.  I started out with a digital pencil sketch and then colored it with Painter's 'real watercolor' brushes.  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Illustration Friday - Immoveable

With these 'Illustration Friday' challenges I usually tend to go with the first thing that pops into my head and this week was no exception.  When I saw the word "immoveable," the first thing I thought of was a very small creature trying to move a much larger one. I immediately thought of a mouse and an elephant. The mouse is trying to have a picnic on the park bench, but a big elephant has come and plopped herself practically on his lunch, completely oblivious to the little fellow's presence. He is trying to move her over a bit, but to him, she is completely immoveable.

By the way, you can click on all of the images to see them larger.

My original sketch showed a close-up of the scene, but from the beginning I knew I wanted to show the entire elephant. I was using a small sketchbook and I just didn't plan it well enough. I started with the mouse and then ran out of room. I hadn't left enough space to show the elephant. So, I scanned this sketch and created a new digital sketch in Corel Painter.

Originally I wanted to do the drawing from the mouse's point of view and to show the elephant with a lot of foreshortening, so that its legs would seem enormous and its head would be much smaller, but I just couldn't get it to look right. This was my first attempt.

Here is the final sketch that I ended up working from.  You can see that I adjusted the size of the elephant's head and rotated the bench a little bit counter-clockwise. I also tilted the elephant's head down a bit and adjusted the size and placement of the book that she is reading. I also added some background details, including a few birds.  I colored the image using Painter's gouache and watercolor brushes and to outline the drawing I used Painter's digital pen brushes.

Illustration Friday - Giant

I could have gone in all sorts of directions with the current Illustration Friday challenge, which this week is 'Giant.' There are so many fairy tales and folk tales featuring giants that it would have been easy to pick a scene from "Jack and the Beanstalk,""Jack the Giant Killer,""David and Goliath," or even "Paul Bunyan," to do for this week's illustration.

But when I started to think about the word and how one's being a giant can be relative, I started to think about how an animal, like a dog, that is not that big to us (at least when compared to an elephant), would be a giant to a little mouse.  That made me think about my old dog Juniper who died a couple of years ago. When he was still alive, I was living with him in Washington state in the beautiful Skagit Valley. Across the road from my house was a series of dikes that protected us from the Skagit River, a river that constantly threatened to flood during the early winter and late spring. I use to walk Juniper (and our other two dogs) along the top of the dike, which was planted with grass that by early summer would get quite high. The high grass provided a home and shelter to all sorts of little creatures. Often, one of the dogs would catch the scent of a mouse or rabbit and dive into the long grass trying to track down a tasty morsel. They rarely caught anything, the grass provided too many hiding places and escape routes, but this week's challenge made me think about the mice that were probably cowering in fear waiting for this giant animal to go away.

I found an old photo of Juniper standing at the top of the dike that I used as a reference. Here is the sketch I made based on my old photo of him.  As you can see in the sketch, I had a lot more little mice hiding in the grass. The mice in the sketch were also a lot more cartoony. As I began painting the dog, he began to look more and more real, so when it came time to paint the mice, I decided to use a more realistic approach for them as well.

First I blocked in some color. If you look carefully, you can see the sketch showing through faintly from another layer.

After painting in the basic lights and darks, I started adding some deeper shadows. I eventually decided to lighten the grass and to darken the dog. I felt this would make him appear a bit more ominous and by lightening the bottom half of the image, it would draw more attention to the hiding mice.

Here I am adding some of the grass details at the dog's feet.

Here's a close up of one of the little mice, which is on its own layer. When I first began working on him, I turned off the darker grass layers that were beneath him, so that it would be easier to see what I was doing.

I spent more time working on the dog than on any other part of this illustration. The entire time I worked on him, I constantly checked this photograph for reference. Working on this project brought back so many memories of walking Juniper and my other dogs Lucy and Me-Me. I still miss all three of them, and those beautiful walks atop the Skagit River dikes.

Library Discard Book Finds

Our local public library here in Bloomington, Indiana, recently held one of its clearance sales where they get rid of discarded books and books that have been donated to raise money for the library.  I have very fond memories of going to library sales as a kid with my parents and my sister.  We were all readers in my family and none of us could resist a bargain so it was an event that we all looked forward to.  The public library in my hometown of Riverside, CA held their sales on the lower level of the Riverside Municipal Auditorium.  The Auditorium is a beautiful building that was dedicated in 1929 (see above picture). We always arrived at the sales early and I remember standing outside in the auditorium's beautiful Spanish courtyard waiting for the doors to open.  Once inside we were each given a brown paper shopping bag and then we were set loose to browse for treasures.  We never failed to fill up our bags.  My dad filled his bag with non-fiction, often books about the French Revolution or books on science.  My mom loved mysteries and historical fiction, so she was always on the look out for books by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Mary Stewart, or Eileen Goudge. I think I had recently discovered Daphne DuMaurier and A.J. Cronin, so I kept an eye open for books by them.  My sister was interested in literary fiction and dog stories. We were also both interested in books connected with the movies and star biographies.  A book that I featured on this blog not long ago, "Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies," with illustrations by Ronald Searle, was purchased at one of those sales.


Anyway, back to the local library sale that I recently attended. At this sale I spent a good deal of time and most of my money on children's books.  I found some wonderful picture books from the 1960s and even a couple of much older books from the 1940s.  I found two books illustrated by Adrienne Adams, an illustrator who was a two time winner of the Caldecott Honor Award (for "Houses from the Sea," and "The Day We Saw the Sun Come Up.") Adams who was born in 1906, was at the height of her career in the fifties and sixties and was known for her illustrated interpretations of various fairy tales.  The two books I found, illustrated in very different styles are "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," and "The Mouse Palace," by Frances Carpenter.

Her illustrations for the "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," are done in a flat, but colorful style, where each scene is depicted in an almost tableaux format.  Some of them, like the illustration of the three riders (above right) suggest a medieval tapestery. In the two page spread (below), I love how she has heightened the colors of the princesses' dresses by placing them against a black background and then echoed the colors of their dresses in the awnings covering the little gondolas on the opposite page.

In this illustration, Adams has framed the figures with the trees, an arrangement that to me suggests the layout of a stained glass window or an illuminated manuscript.

In this particular book, Adams avoids using close-ups, keeping the viewer at a slight distance from her subjects. Every figure is seen in (to use cinema terminology) medium to long shot, so that their whole body is always on display. Once again, this choice seems to reinforce the illustration's links to medieval tapestries or stained glass windows, a fitting choice for this classic fairy tale.

I have to admit that I have not read "The Mouse Palace," yet, but from glancing at it, I know it takes place in old Siam (Thailand). In the book's forward, the author Frances Carpenter informs us that she was inspired to write the story after visiting Thailand and seeing the little palace that was built to house the pet mice of the king's children. Like the king in Margaret Landon's story "Anna and the King of Siam," and the same character in the musical version "The King and I," the king in this story seems to be the father to many children. I suppose it might even be the same king.

The illustrations in this book are done in what appears to be pencil and colored pencil with some areas of flat color laid in.

 Here is the king with his children. The bright red coat of the king, makes him the focal point, but his gaze toward the children directs your eye down to the right of the image where you can take in the delicate drawing of the children's costumes and faces.

I particularly like the mood that Adams has created in this black and white drawing of one of the king's children outside under a full moon.

And I love the soft coloration, the poses and the facial expressions of this group of Siamese cats.

Finally, here is an illustration of the little mice born at the end of the story. I think Adams has done a wonderful job in this illustration of utilizing the negative space created by the white coats of the baby mice against their somewhat darker background.

Before finding these two delightful books, I wasn't familiar with Adrienne Adams, but I'm happy that I discovered her and I'll definitely be keeping my eye open for some of her other titles the next time I'm at a used book sale.