Pen and Ink - Digital Style Part 6, Something at the Door

Last fall, in order to strengthen the black and white section of my portfolio, I began creating some digital pen and ink illustrations based on scenes from a young adult novel I had recently finished reading. The book, "The Hounds of the Morrigan," by Pat O'Shea is a fantasy adventure novel rooted in Celtic mythology.  It's quite a long novel (over 600 pages) and as far as I know, there has never been an edition with illustrations. The story is filled with vivid scenes and characters and as I read it, I was able to easily visualize certain passages that I felt would make good illustrations.

The illustration that I am featuring in this post is from a scene that comes fairly early in the story. After 10-year-old Pidge unwittingly releases the evil serpent Olc-Glas from the pages of a crumbling manuscript, he finds that he and his sister are soon being hunted by the Morrigan, the Goddess of Death and Destruction. In this scene, Pidge who is not yet entirely aware of the dangers he has unleashed, wakes in the night and discovers that something has entered his room. Here is the passage:

"It was a cold, hissing, tinkling sound and it came from the landing outside his bedroom door. He sat up, eyes wide open.

There was something coming in from under the door: a thin, snaky tendril of fog. It crept into his room, keeping low on the floor. It began touching things and creeping into things. It whispered to itself as it crept towards his chest of drawers and then it insinuated itself through all the cracks, until it had been in and out of every drawer. It withdrew then, and paused as though to think before turning towards his wardrobe, as if it had an intelligence and could make decisions for itself."

The main challenge of this illustration was to create an atmospheric scene in what is basically a darkened room. I decided to have a full moon outside as one source of light, that would also provide some reflected illumination. The other light is coming from under the door. Because of the furniture elements in the room and the perspective I wanted to use for the figure, I used Poser, a 3D modeling program to help me layout the scene. I'm not an expert at using Poser, but I know enough to position figures and to add a few props. I also know how to move the camera around so that I can select the best view. Once I got the scene close to the way I had envisioned it, I exported a low resolution tiff file of the image and then opened that in Corel Painter.

The next step was to add a new layer over the Poser scene so that I could sketch out the details of my illustration. In the image at the left you can see I have lowered the opacity of the Poser scene so that it can be used as a guide for creating my illustration. You can also see the beginnings of my sketch.

Once I had outlined a sketch, I then began blacking in the darkest areas. I used Painter's pen brushes for this, primarily the Flat Color pen and the Scratchboard tool. For the finer cross-hatch lines, I used the Smooth Round Pen 1.5.  As I was inking in the blacks, I began to realize that I really needed to add some shading to my pencil sketch so that I would have a better guide for inking in my shadows.

Here is my pencil sketch with added shading, that I used as my guide for crosshatching the lights and darks.

To the left you can see the penciled image showing through from its own layer underneath the inked layer. I created lots of layers for this image. The screenshot at left shows how many layers I was using. Since I was going to be doing lots of crosshatching, having separate layers for different areas of the image made it easier to build up the darks. It also helped in case I made a mistake and needed to erase an area. By having different layers I could erase sections without having to start over again on the areas beneath it. For example I had a separate layer for the recessed panels in the bedroom door. I did the crosshatching on the door frame first, then added a new layer for the panels. If my crosshatching went over the edges of the door frame, by having it on a different layer I could clean up the edges without ruining the surrounding areas in the panels.

I began working on this illustration last November. Then, with the holidays and my preparations for going to the SCBWI winter conference, I put it aside for awhile. It wasn't until two days ago that I finally decided to tackle it again. I wish there was a way that the computer could keep track of how many brushstrokes are made when creating a digital painting. If there is such a piece of software I'm not aware of it.  Anyway, I would love to know how many strokes ended up in this piece. While working on it, it felt like millions.

Conferencing with The Three Bears

Last weekend I attended my first Indiana regional SCBWI conference. Saturday was a full day that consisted of general and breakout sessions. Lisa Yoskowitz, an editor from Disney/Hyperion gave a helpful talk on generating suspense. Not necessarily the sort of suspense that you might find in a mystery or thriller, but the suspense you need to generate in order to make the reader want to turn the page. Many of the examples that she used focused primarily on picture books, but I think they could easily be applied to other formats as well. She talked about introducing conflicts and keeping the stakes high and pointed out that suspense, when used well, makes the reader use their imaginations to think about what's going to happen next.

Later in the day I attended two sessions led by Kerry Martin, a Senior Designer from Clarion Books. Prior to those sessions, she also conducted private portfolio critiques, which I signed up for when I registered. When I arrived at the conference and received my schedule I was relieved to find that I was scheduled for her first critique session. I had been a little nervous about it, so I was happy to find that I was going to get it over with early in the day and wouldn't have to worry about it while sitting through the other sessions. My worries were put to rest when I met Ms. Martin. She was very friendly and seemed even a tiny bit shy which helped put me at ease. It was obvious that she respected artists and knew how to communicate her ideas about an artist's work without being harsh or super critical. She focused on the positive things about particular pieces and in a gentle, modest way, made suggestions that she felt could improve them. For example, in a piece that I have in my portfolio that shows a boy entering a dark, cobweb filled attic, she said that the illustration made her want to know more about the story (a good thing) but she felt the boy's face needed a little more work (she suggested adding eyelids). She also felt that placing a few more objects that one might find in an attic might make the scene even more interesting. In another piece she suggested a little more contrast behind one character's face in order to help differentiate the figure a bit more from the background. Overall, I felt the balance of her remarks were positive. At the end of the session she said, "You have a beautiful book."

In the first of the breakout sessions that I attended, Ms. Martin talked about sending out art samples. She showed examples of items that had been sent to her in the mail and which of those things she liked receiving (postcards) and those she didn't like (toys, calendars, temporary tattoos, stickers). Her advice in sending out art work samples could be boiled down to "the simpler the better." Her personal preference definitely seemed to lean toward receiving postcards. She admitted that because she gets so much mail, that if she receives an envelope or box that she has to open, it often gets put on the bottom of the pile.  With a postcard, there is nothing to open, the art is visible immediately, and if you have used an intriguing, striking, quirky image, she will keep it on file. When designing a postcard, she advised against cluttering it up with lots of small images. Two to three images can be made to work if they are clear and placed properly, but she seemed to feel that one really strong image was just as (if not more) effective.

Later in the day, Ms. Martin held a session that concentrated on picture book dummies and showed examples of dummies from various picture book projects that she had worked on. It was an interesting behind the scenes look into how a book is mapped out, and the advantages it has for the artist (and/or author) in planning the illustrations.

The version that I showed at the Illustrator's intensive

The revisions I made based on Kerry Martin's comments

I spent Saturday night in the conference hotel, and Sunday morning got up bright and early to attend the Illustrator's intensive, which was also led by Kerry Martin. The intensive had been limited to seven participants and it apparently had sold out, but when we were scheduled to start, there were only four of us who actually showed up. From what I gathered, at least two of the other illustrators who had signed up had not realized, until they arrived at the conference, that there had been a homework assignment and that we were expected to bring that assignment with us to discuss during the intensive. I felt sorry for the illustrators who missed out, but having a smaller class made it a more intimate experience for those of us who had done the assignment. The assignment was to create two to three 2-page spreads from "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." It was a fun assignment to work on and gave me a feel of what it might be like to actually design and layout a picture book. I ended up doing three spreads. Ms. Martin said she loved my three bears, she thought they were very cute. She also liked the cottage that I had designed for them to live in. Most of her criticisms were aimed at my Goldilocks. She seemed to feel that she was too 'average, all-American' looking. She suggested that if I chose to continue working on the project for my portfolio, that I should do something to make her more special (for example, patterns in her clothing, more detail in her hair, etc.). She also felt that in one of my spreads (the one showing Goldilocks trying out the three chairs) that the color palette was too hot for her tastes. She seemed to like the overall layout of the images, and she could tell that I had been thinking of character placement in regards to the book's gutter.

Even though the conference and the assignment are now over, I've decided to continue working on the Three Bears illustrations and to make the revisions that were suggested. I feel that by doing this, I will end up with some good portfolio pieces. During this past week I've spent a lot of time revising the layout that shows Goldilocks trying out the three chairs. I chose this one to start with because it's the one that needed the most reworking. I will probably continue to work on it, but the major issues have been taken care of, i.e., adjusting the color palette, making Goldilocks more 'special' (I hope I've accomplished this), making the type smaller and adding some background details. In comparison, the other two should be easy to revise. Once they are completed, I'll post them as well.

Illustration Friday - Journey

I've been busy working on an illustration homework assignment for a conference I'm attending in a couple of weeks, so I didn't have time to create a new illustration for this week's 'Illustration Friday' word challenge, which this week is "Journey." So, instead, I went through my portfolio and found this image which I did last year. A little gray rabbit is starting out on a journey in a hot air balloon, I think it fits the theme quite well. As you might be able to tell, I've been heavily influenced by children's book illustrators like Garth Williams and Richard Scarry.  My image was digitally painted in Corel Painter using various brushes, primarily the gouache and chalk brushes.

Illustration Friday - Bottled

It's been a few weeks since I've had time to work on an Illustration Friday challenge, but now that the Handmade Market that I was preparing for is over, I've got a little more time. This week's challenge is the word 'Bottled,' and the first thing that came to my mind when I read it, was the bottled city of Kandor from the silver age 'Superman' comics. For those of you who have not kept up on Superman lore, Kandor was a kryptonian city that was reduced to miniature size and placed in a large bottle by the space villain, Brainiac. Superman kept the city and its bottled inhabitants in his Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic. He made a vow to himself that one day he would find a way to enlarge it and its miniaturized inhabitants back to their normal size. I was a big Superman fan back in the mid sixties when I was a pre-teen, and to this day I still enjoy reading stories from that era. I haven't read Superman regularly for years, but from what I've read in The Essential Superman Encylopedia, by Robert Greenberger and Martin Pasko, the city was finally restored to normal size sometime in the late seventies or early eighties.

So my illustration this week is my tribute to the bottle city of Kandor. I created the image using both Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. I did all of the preliminary work in Painter and then used Photoshop to apply a 'Mister Retro' filter that gave it the look of a vintage printed graphic.  I hope you enjoy it.

Below is the original digital watercolor that I created in Painter, before I applied the text and the Photoshop filters.

More of What I've Been Up To

A few weeks ago I found out that I had been accepted into an upcoming local juried craft fair, known as the Bloomington Handmade Market. I was happy to get the news since I was turned down when I first applied to be in their winter show last December. This will be my second experience of being a vendor at a craft fair. I was in a small local show shortly before Christmas, but this one is going to be much bigger. It's held in our town's convention center and it will have a lot more vendors and will be better publicized. Since I've been working hard for the last few weeks to get ready for it, I'm hoping I do well.

The multi-flower punch

One of the areas I decided to concentrate on for this show would be handmade cards and other paper goods (prints of my illustrations, bookmarks, etc.). Since the fair takes place three weeks before Easter, I decided I would make some Easter cards. These have been a lot of fun to make. I've been using a combination of paper punches and rubber stamps. One of the punches that I recently purchased is one that makes different sized flower pieces. One squeeze of the punch cuts out six different shapes that can be used either as is or stacked in combinations to make different looking flowers. When you use an assortment of paper colors, the combinations are endless.

Some of the card stock I used for the flowers

After punching out dozens of various colored flowers, I sat around for awhile and glued pieces together in combinations that I liked. After making several dozen flowers, I began thinking of card designs.

I'm not only creating Easter cards, but also cards for birthdays and other occasions. If you scroll to the bottom of this post you can see some pictures of a birthday card I designed as well as a 'thinking of you,' card.

So far I've spent more time creating the punched and stamped components than I have actually assembling the cards. So over the next two weeks, I have a lot of card assembly I need to get cracking on.

An array of paper flowers

Close up of some of the color combinations

Work in progress

A few of the card designs I came up with

Some of the squares and shields I'll use for backgrounds

using some paper punched designs as stencils

I tried my hand at doing some embossing

elements for an Easter card

hand-colored and cut-out rubber stamp image

finished birthday card with a western theme

finished thinking of you card