Status Report 3/19/10

This is just a quick pic from my laptop.



I was able to put some more time in on this.
I worked on the two cats the bird, the girl and the ground plane since the last post.
It's coming along fine.
I need to get it finished over the weekend because my agent wants to post it on their section of www.picture-book.com
I should be able to get it done.

I just have to do the dog and his bone, the bushes in the foreground, and some flowers on the bushes in the background and foreground, and then step back and see what needs more work before I call it done.

I'll do a good scan of it tomorrow and show some details.

IF - Expired

I found a great new way to combine two weeks worth of IF topics this week!
I started to do a piece for last Fridays topic - Subterranean but didn't have time to finish it.
So it fits perfectly into this Fridays topic - Expired.
Here's what I was able to do before time expired.

It's The Moleman and his minions in their subterrannean lair playing charades.
It's The Moleman's turn and he's trying to get his team to guess his word.
He's doing the 4th syllable - jar
See him acting like he's trying to open a jar?
His word is Kilimanjaro.
The guys on the opposing team, on the right, are telling him his time has expired - it works twice.
As you can see, I was still working out how to draw the minions and what the background was going to look like.  I couldn't remember what his subterranean lair looked like back in the 80's.
If you look a little longer you'll probably see the John Burne influence from my comic book collecting days.  He was the big cheese when I was really into comics.

Status Report 3/11/10

I was able to do some more work on this...

Mostly, I focussed on the dark green tree and the fence.
I believe I'll be changing the color of the hearts on the fence now this is not going to be finished in February. I don't want it overly hearty anymore.
Next up is everything on the ground plane.

Status Report

I finally got some time to get back to work on the girl illustration.

I started in on the background - sky, bushes, fence, and tree - with the gouache.
I want to eliminate as much of the line work in the back as possible so that it has a nice effect in the foreground.
The bushes will need more work after I have established the foreground art.
As you can see I used a blue grey on the fence to set it back.
I will continue working on the fence to make it lighter. I need it to be dark enough not to blend in with the dog. He will be white with some large patches of color.
I added a dark base coat to the tree. I'll continue to work on it so that it looks like it's in the evergreen family. Lots of needles, not leaves.

I'm happy with the way the gouache is going over the spray fix so far. In some spots I have to work the brush a bit to get the color to soak in and take hold. I'm guessing those are areas where I overlapped the fixative when spraying it.

New work

About this time last week an old client reconnected with me to do some work, a new client job got the go ahead, and some map work needed to be finished up.

Here's a bit of what the old client wanted.

There are more projects in the works with this client which is nice.

Here's a bit of what the new client wanted. It's waiting for final approval.

The client is in New Zealand so I can put a pin in that country and a mark it off my list.

The map stuff I can't show you. There aren't really any characters in it anyway.

For all 3 clients I do the work using a combination of hand drawing the rough and then pasting it into Adobe Illustrator and using it as a guide to draw the final art.

You'll notice that I have used two different approaches in the way the art is created for each client.

For the older client I used a soft blended approach without outlines.

There's a lot of gradient mesh use in that image.

The image of the girl is a flat approach using outlines. Kind of like a gouache painting.

I really have to push myself in both approaches to try to create volume in the art.

I'm not going for realism, but I don't want it to look flat like cut paper.

I like the way the girls hair is looking.

Under painting

2/20/2010

Yesterday I worked on the under painting.

I decided to use watercolor for the underpainting because I already had the materials.

I would have had to go out to buy the right color(s) of pastel if I went with it.

As you can see I have an overall pink wash.

Then I went back in and added yellow to the sky, fencepost caps, and her scarf.

The next step will be to spray it with fixative and then start painting with more watercolor and then gouache for opaque detail.

I usually go back in at the end and do some color outlining.

Val girl revisions - 2/18/2010

I have revised the line art for this image again after receiving some comments from the Picture Book Doodlers blog...

http://picturebookdoodlers.blogspot.com/

and from the scbwi web site.

You'll notice that I added letters to the two cats mouths and a wrapped dog bone at the feet of the dog.

I decided to keep the Bull Terrier. I like him because of the shape he makes.

I added the texture to the image, a gate - I kept it closed so that I didn't have to introduce any perspective into the image, and some additional greenery to create a bit of foreground.

The line art makes everything look like it's on the same plane right now.

I will be making sure that the background elements fall back in the painting process.

My next step will be to paint a wash of pink over the entire image.

I will probably use watercolor to do it.

I say probably because I saw a technique in a book today where the artist rubbed an even wash of color over her image using pastel and then went back in and removed the pastel in areas that needed to be lighter, then she sealed it with fixative and painted over the image with watercolor and acrylic to achieve the final art.

I might try the pastel.

I will be achieving the final art by painting with watercolor and gouache.