Illustration Friday - Perennial

It's been a while since I've had time to create an illustration for 'Illustration Friday," but when I saw that this week's word is 'Perennial,' I decided I should give it a go, especially since I just finished the big project I was working on.  Anyway, being a gardener, the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the word 'Perennial,' was flowers.  When thinking of a way to depict the word, my mind drifted to thoughts of my grandmother who, from what I've heard, was an avid gardener. She died when I was seven years old and my memories of her are vague, but I do have memories of being in her Colorado garden, or what was left of it. By the time I was born, most of her gardening days were behind her and all that was left of her garden were some of the perennials that came back every year. So this illustration, a digital watercolor created with Corel Painter 11, is a tribute to my father's mother, whose name was Augusta Desjardins. An appropriate name for a woman who loved to garden.

Illustration Friday - Shadows

For the past couple of 'Illustration Fridays,' I've used work that I had previously done that seemed to fit the theme. At the moment, I'm in limbo over the final details of an illustration job (an actual paying job!), so I decided I would paint something new for this week's 'Illustration Friday' word challenge which is "Shadows."

I actually ended up creating two pieces on this theme, both involving trees and their shadows. My first attempt was a digital pen and ink drawing that I created from my imagination. I'm not very good at drawing trees without a reference, so I'm not completely satisfied with this first attempt (see image at left). I'm especially dissatisfied with the middle tree, maybe because its branching structure is too symmetrical. I also couldn't get the shadows on the ground to look right.

I decided to give it another try, this time using Painter's digital oil brushes. But this time I also decided to use a photographic reference. I love photographing trees, especially in the fall when they put on their colorful show. I took this panorama photograph last year in Bryan Park which is just a couple of blocks from where I live.

I made a sketch based on the tree that is just to the left of center. Here is my image at an early stage with the sketch still visible. I wanted this to be a somewhat loose and impressionistic piece, so I kept my sketch fairly minimal. I started off painting with fairly light tones.  As I went along, I added new layers with darker glazes. Every once in a while I would collapse the layers so that everything was on one layer and then, when necessary, I would add a new layer and once again add darker glazes. I created my glazes by using Painter's Wet Oily Blender brush set to a low opacity. Since I would paint these glazes on their own layer, I could also layer the opacity of the layer itself, which gave me much more control over how dark the glaze appeared.

The finished piece

Illustration Friday - Asleep

For this week's 'Illustration Friday' word, "Asleep," I am using an image that I created back in April as a homework assignment for an illustrator's intensive that I attended at SCBWI's Indiana regional conference. The assignment was to create two to three 2-page spreads from "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." One of the spreads that I chose to do, shows the Three Bears discovering Goldilocks asleep in Baby Bear's bed.

This illustration went through at least four revisions before I arrived at the finished image. Before attending the intensive, I showed my work in progress to a critique group that I belong to and their comment on my first draft was that Goldilocks looked too sexy (see the image at right). As a reference for Goldilocks's sleeping pose, I had looked at Lisbeth Zwerger's version of "Thumbelina," and based my drawing on a similar pose that Zwerger used for her heroine, but what worked for Thumbelina, didn't seem to work for Goldilocks, so I went back to the drawing board.

In my next version, I tried to make Goldilocks look a bit younger and I've changed her body so that she is lying in a more level, less provocative pose. Everyone seemed to agree that this was a much better pose.

The next revision for this illustration was done  because of a change I made in an earlier spread in the story, where I decided to put Goldilocks into pants. This revision was fairly easy since the only thing involved was repainting the lower part of her body.

The final revision was made based on recommendations from Kerry Martin, the editor from Clarion books who was the conference's instructor for the illustrator's intensive.  She loved the Three Bears characters, she thought they were very cute, but she felt my Goldilocks character looked too much like an all-American girl and that there was nothing 'special' about her.  Another point that was brought to my attention was that the windows in the background didn't match the windows that I had shown in an earlier, exterior view of the bears' cottage.  So, this revision involved changing the background wall and windows and completely re-drawing Goldilocks.  It may not be evident in this pose, but notice that once again, I've tried to make Goldilocks look younger. One way that I accomplished this was to shorten her hair length and change it's color so that it's not such a 'hot' yellow.  I also changed the color of her sweater and added a ladybug pattern to her boots. These changes in the design of Goldilocks are more evident in one of the earlier spreads I revised where I show Goldilocks trying out the three chairs (see below).  In the chair spread, it's easier to see the changes in Goldilocks's appearance. Not only did, I shorten her hair, add a pattern to her boots, change the color of her clothing, but I also added a bunny design to her T-shirt.

Creating these spreads for the illustrator's intensive, and then attending the intensive was a great experience. It gave me a taste of what I imagine it would be like to work on an actual picture book project. Coming up with the concepts, designing characters and settings, submitting the work for review and doing the revisions are all components of creating a picture book. Hopefully, one day I'lll be doing it for real.

Illustration Friday - Soaked

The word for this week's 'Illustration Friday' challenge is "Soaked," an appropriate word for this week considering the number of storms that have passed through where I live. This is a piece that I actually did a few weeks ago as an experiment in using Corel Painter's Liquid Ink and Watercolor brushes. The idea came from something I witnessed on one of the many daily dog walks that I take with my dog, Poppy. One day, after a spring shower, we were out walking and saw a young boy and girl out playing with their umbrellas in the puddle-filled streets. Since it was warm out, they were in shorts and didn't seem to mind getting a little soaked. That afternoon, I created this illustration based on my memory of those two kids playing in the rain.

I started this illustration with a simple digital sketch, using Painter's Colored Pencil brush.

After sketching in the children, I began inking them in and adding some ink splatters to the background.

I continued to add layers of ink and watercolor washes.

Here I've added an overall wash of color to tone down the stark white background that was showing through.

You can see that by this stage, I've changed the color of the ink I used to outline the children. I started off with a brown ink and here I've changed it to black. I also decided to give the umbrellas a white ink outline.

The finished image. For the final step, I softened some of the watercolor edges and lightly erased some areas to give a better feeling of light reflecting off of the puddles.

More Pen & Ink Sketchiness

A few days ago I wrote a blog about working in a sketchier pen and ink style. I so enjoyed working on that illustration, that I decided to go ahead and do another one. Like the last one, this is also based on a scene from Eleanor Cameron's "Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet," a middle grade sci-fi fantasy that was one of my childhood favorites. In this scene, the scheming and ambitious Horatio Q. Peabody is determined to get to the bottom of the secret discovery that was alluded to in a letter from Tyco Bass that was sent to his employer, the astronomer Dr. Frobisher. After tricking Chuck, David and Theodosius Bass into thinking that he's a professor, Horatio takes Dr. Frobisher's place as a guest lecturer at the boys' Society for Young Astronomers and Students of Space Travel. The scene in my illustration takes place after Horatio's lecture, when he has pretended to go to bed, stuffing his bed with pillows to make it look occupied:

"Then he turned out the light, surveyed the lump that in the darkness looked exactly as if someone were lying there, then on tiptoe he slipped out of the house and around to the cellar door. Here he hunched down behind a bush and listened. The boys and Mr. Theo were talking . . . " 

In my earliest sketch, I had Horatio standing in a sort of hunched over pose.  I didn't care for the way he looked and in order to better hide him behind the bush, I needed to put him in more of a kneeling pose.  To the right, you can see my original sketch.

To the left, you can see my original version, after I've begun to ink it in. As I continued to work on it, I became more and more dissatisfied with the Horatio figure. He was standing too far out from the bush that he was supposed to be hiding behind.

In the image on the left, you can see that I have erased the standing figure and re-sketched him in more of a kneeling pose. In this version I still don't have the legs quite right.

Building up the black shadows was the most difficult aspect of this illustration, especially the shadows around the bush and the tree. I didn't want to make them so dark that the foliage became obscured.

I'm fairly happy with the outcome. I especially like the way the light from the cellar illuminates part of the wall of the house. I'm not entirely happy with my design for Horatio, but I am happy with the way he's lit. I left enough highlights on him, to make him visible, but not so much that he stands out as a distraction.

I set out to create a scene that had a dark, mysterious atmosphere and I think the result was fairly successful in achieving that goal.