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.

Work in Progress - Above and Below

For the past couple of days I've been working on a somewhat detailed illustration that was inspired by the old Masterpiece Theatre show, "Upstairs Downstairs." For those of you who don't know this program, it detailed the lives of the wealthy Bellamy family (the 'upstairs' part of the program) and their servants who worked downstairs.  Their story, set in London, begins in 1904 and ends around 1930. Both the upstairs and the downstairs families are touched by such events as the sinking of the Titanic, World War I, the 1918 flu epidemic and the start of the depression. It's a show that often discusses social class, the discrepancy between those born of nobility and wealth and those born to more common circumstances.  But the show also had elements of high class soap opera detailing the scandals of both sets of families - extra-marital affairs, children out of wedlock, suicide, and even a hostage taking.  Yes, the show could sometimes be a bit 'talky' but above everything else, and what made me such a big fan of the show was the careful attention to the creation of the characters and how they grew over the course of the 25 years that the series covered.  This was a time of great social change and upheaval, a time when class distinctions began to break down.  This is especially evident in season 4 that covers the World War I period.  Some of the servants get jobs outside of the house to aid in the war effort.  These characters, who in the beginning of the series believed that they would spend their entire lives in domestic service, are shown that the world outside offers them other opportunities.  Some, like the rigid household butler, Hudson, cling to the ways of the past.  He sticks to the moral code of the past and feels that society is crumbling when changes in the household bring about new attitudes and behaviors.  Others, like Rose the upper house parlor maid, who as played by the wonderful Jean Marsh, becomes the heart of the show, are young enough to have an open mind and adapt to the changes in the world.  This show is in my top 10 of all-time favorite television shows.  The last episode of the series, when it first aired in 1975 brought tears to my eyes.  As I recall, it was the first time that a television program made me cry.

Over the past few weeks my partner and I've been watching the show on DVD. My partner had never seen it, while I have fond memories of watching the show with my family when it first aired in the seventies.  As I've been watching the show, which as I've mentioned is about two families (and yes, the servants, though they're not related to one another, do make up a family), I began to think about an idea for a children's illustration. My illustration wouldn't have anything to do with servants, or class issues, but two very different types of families that live in close proximity to one another. The above ground family would naturally be a human family, while below ground is a family of rabbits. Since I love the look of the Edwardian period in which "Upstairs Downstairs," is set, I decided I would set my illustration in the same period. While working on this illustration, I've been looking at a lot of work by Mary Blair, the artist who was one of Disney's top designers in the late 1950s and 60s. She excelled at stylized backgrounds and creating scenes with lots of characters. I love the way that she drew children and especially the look of her plants, flowers and trees. So, I still have a lot to do on this illustration, but here is a shot of it in progress. This shot shows the original sketch superimposed on top of the painting, which, by the way, is being done using Painter 11. When it's finished, I'll post the completed image.

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.

The Animal's Garden - Evolution of a Digital Painting

I haven't had time lately to work on this blog because I've been spending all of my time preparing for the upcoming SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) conference in New York.  It has long been a dream of mine to illustrate a children's book. I realized that if I ever want this dream to come true, I need to start putting myself and my work out where it can be seen.  So, even though it's rather expensive, I decided it might be a worthwhile investment to go to this conference.  One of the deciding factors was that there is going to be an Illustrator's intensive day, where illustrators can participate in workshops and have their portfolios looked at by people in the publishing industry.

One of the pieces I've been working on for my portfolio is a scene from a children's story I wrote back in the mid 1980s.  It was a story about an abandoned, overgrown garden inhabited by various animals.   I'm planning on going back and revising the story, but in the meantime, I dug out from my flat files, a couple of watercolor/pastel illustrations that I did back when I first wrote the story.  The paper on which these paintings were done has darkened over the years, and the pastels on the paintings have gotten smudged.  In other words they look dingy and out of focus.  These days I do almost all of my artwork digitally using Corel Painter XI, so I decided to redo one of these paintings on my computer.

Before I go any further, I want to let you know that you can see enlargements of these images by clicking on them.  I started off by taking a digital photograph of the original painting (see the above image). I used a camera instead of the scanner because I didn't want to smudge the painting anymore than it already has been by placing it on the scanner bed.  I wanted to widen the scope of the image, so I also incorporated background elements from another painting.  You can see these in the digital pencil sketch that I did based on this painting.

This might be a good time to show you what my palette of digital tools looks like.  Painter allows you to make customized palettes made up of any tools that you like.  This is great because then you don't have to scroll through their long list every time you want to switch tools.  In this palette I have a hard and soft colored pencil, a #2 pencil, a piece of soft chalk, pens of various sizes, erasers of various sizes and strengths, an oily blender brush, several different sized gouache brushes, a number of different blending stumps, a charcoal stick, two varieties of soft pastels and a couple of sponges that can be used for glazing and adding texture.  There is also a customized brush that I made for another painting to add leaf texture to a tree (I didn't use it in this painting).

Once I had the layout to my satisfaction, I searched the internet for reference photos for some of the animals.  When I found what I was looking for, I roughly cut them out and then pasted them on a layer beneath my drawing.  I used these mainly to give me help in defining the animal's form for shading and fur.  Once I began to paint, I turned this layer off so that it was no longer visible

I began by painting in colors for the night time sky (In this shot, I have the layer with the drawing turned off).

I then began filling in other background elements. To do this painting, I created lots of different layers, so that I could work on separate elements without worrying about painting over something in the background.  Each layer could be turned on or off as needed.  Here you see the layers with the sky, the wall, the moon, the ground, the trees, the cat and rabbit, and finally, the pencil sketch, a total of seven layers.

Here is a shot of the ground layer where I've begun to add some texture and shadows.  I added another layer above this one where I painted in some weeds.  You can see that some of the other layers have been turned off.

Here I've begun to add in some other shrubs and more background detail, including a pond and a sundial.

Here is a detail of a layer where I began to block in the color of the foreground animals.  I mostly used a gouache brush to get in a base layer of color. Then on top of that I added other colors with an oily blender brush.

And here you can see I've begun to blend in some of the lights and darks to create the shading and fur.

To create the animal fur, I discovered that using a grainy blender stump, and moving it back and forth in a direction following the contours of the body was a good way of getting the look of fur.  Here is a rabbit with its color shading blocked in and roughly blended.

Here is where I began to create some fur texture.  Before using the grainy blender stump, I added some highlights and shadows with a soft pastel brush.  This also added texture.

Here I'm beginning to use the grainy blender, moving it back in forth in the direction I want the fur to follow.  If you drag the grainy blender back and forth in the same direction, the blender drags out pixels in a linear fashion, that gives you a feeling of fur.  It helps to go through this process a number of times - blending, adding more lights and darks with the soft pastel, blending again, adding more pastel highlights, blending, etc.  This builds up layers of color helping to give the illusion of dense fur.

Here I've begun to add some texture and shading to the stone walkway.  Once again, I painted the base color with a gouache brush then added dabs of color with an oily blender.  I later added texture with pastels and sponges and painted in some edge detail with colored pencils.

Here the scene is pretty much finished.  Now it's time to add some effects to the lighting.

It may not show in this screen shot, but in this image I've added some glows and darkened areas of the background to put the emphasis on the circle of animals.

Here is the finished piece.