Light and Shade

Barbara Cooney in Black and White

2012-01-20T10:41:00.000-05:00

In a career that spanned six decades, artist Barbara Cooney (1917-2000) illustrated over one hundred children's books. She twice received the Caldecott award for best picture book, in 1957 for "Chanticleer and the Fox," and in 1979 for "Ox-Cart Man," by Donald Hall. I first became aware of her books while I was working in a bookstore in Washington state. I think the first one that I read was "Miss Rumphius," her 1982 American Book Award winning story of a woman who sets out to make the world a more beautiful place by planting lupines everywhere. Cooney considered this book to be a part of what she called her trilogy, which also contained "Island Boy" (1988) and "Hattie and the Wild Waves" (1990). In the book "Children's Books and Their Creators," edited by Anita Silvey, Cooney is quoted as saying that the books in this trilogy "come as close to any autobiography as I will ever get."

Miss Rumphius and her later books were created in color using acrylic paint and Prismacolor pencils, but some of her earlier works were done in black and white. On a recent trip to our public library's children's classics section, I discovered one of her earlier books, a 1949 compilation of stories and poems compiled by the Child Association of America, called "Read Me Another Story." This book is filled with charming scratchboard illustrations that give us a glimpse into Cooney's style from the first decade of her illustration career.

Here is how Cooney described the beginnings of her career: "In the beginning I worked in black and white, that being the most economical for the publisher. I yearned for color. 'But,' said my editor, 'you have no color sense.' Still yearning for color, I accepted the discouraging pronouncement. Eventually a little color was allowed - sometimes two colors, sometimes three. But each color had to be painted on a separate sheet of paper. These were called 'overlays.' One art director hoped to convince me that working with these separations was 'the purest form of illustration.' But I found it tedious."

Looking at these beautiful black and white illustrations from "Read Me Another Story," I don't think that the addition of color would add anything to their charm.

How to Create an Art Nouveau Illustration

2012-01-14T19:32:00.000-05:00

A little over two years ago, I started creating a series of illustrations that I could sell as prints in my Etsy shop and also to be used on T-shirts in my CafePress store. I have called this series Celestial Creatures because each illustration features an animal (real or mythological) that has had a constellation named after it. After buying a book on Alphonse Mucha, I decided to create these images in an Art Nouveau style.

My latest illustration was for the southern constellation Tucana, the Toucan.

Before beginning, I gathered some reference images from the internet. I sketched my final image of the toucan, based on a composite of several reference photos.

I based some of my Art Nouveau floral shapes on some of the shapes in Mucha's work.

I created the image in Corel Painter 11 and started with a simple digital pencil sketch, which I refined as I went along. At this stage, I also began to play around with the type that would be in the image.

I placed my sketch into an Adobe Illustrator file to create the curved border and the other art nouveau shapes. I could have done this within Painter, but I find illustrator's shape tool is easier to work with. Once I got the shapes the way I wanted them, I saved the file as a .psd (photoshop) file so that I could reopen it in Painter.

I then began to paint the background and the bird. The bird, the border elements and the type were on separate layers from the background. For painting the image I used a combination of Painter's brushes. I primarily used some of the gouache brushes, but I also used the Artist's Oils soft blender brush as well as some of the regular blender tools. I added details with some of the pen brushes.

From this point, it was just a matter of continuing to paint and blend, just as if I was working on a real canvas. In case you're wondering, I use a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet and pen to do my painting. I think something like this would be impossible to do with a mouse.

The Final Image

Turkey Lurkey Times Two

2012-01-03T12:17:00.000-05:00

Every year the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) hosts a contest for their illustrator members. The award is given by artist Tomie dePaola who, up until 2011, financed the award himself (now, SCBWI pays out the award). Tomie was the artist responsible for getting the 'I' for Illustrators added to the society's name. Each year, he selects some text as a challenge for artists to illustrate. The prize is a $1,000 gift certificate for art supplies and a trip to the NY winter conference. This year he chose a passage from the well known children's fable, "Chicken Little." There have been many adaptations of this story, but the version that dePaola chose for this year's contest is by P.C. Asbjörnsen.

So they went along and went along until they met Turkey Lurkey
“Good morning, Goosey Loosey, Ducky Daddles, Cocky Locky, Henny Penny,
and Chicken Licken,” said Turkey Lurkey, “where are you going?”
“Oh, Turkey Lurkey, the sky is falling and we are going to tell the King!”
“How do you know the sky is falling?” asked Turkey Lurkey.
“Ducky Daddles told me,” said Goosey Loosey.
“Cocky Locky told me,” said Ducky Daddles.
“Henny Penny told me,” said Cocky Locky.
“Chicken Licken told me,” said Henny Penny
“I saw it with my own eyes, I heard it with my own ears,
and a piece of it fell on my tail!” said Chicken Licken.
“Then I will go with you,” said Turkey Lurkey, “and we will tell the King!”

If you read the selection, you can see that, other than a lot of conversation, there is not really any action taking place. You have five characters, a goose, a duck, a rooster, a hen, and a chick taking turns answering Turkey Lurkey's question of "Where are you going?"

I ended up creating two illustrations for this challenge (I only submitted one). The first illustration I created, was in my usual style, with somewhat realistic animals set against an animated film-style background. It was perfectly fine, but I didn't think there was anything extraordinary about it. In the contest rules, dePaola says that he wants to be surprised by the illustration and jealous that he didn't think of doing it that way. Well, I didn't feel that my first attempt was at all surprising, and even though I was happy with the composition and I loved the colors, I felt it looked too Disney like and I doubted that someone of dePaola's experience would have been made jealous by it.

I decided to rethink the entire image and to try and work in a different style. Changing your style is not an easy thing to do. It's like trying to draw with your left hand when you've grown up drawing with your right hand. I felt my brain was constantly trying to derail my efforts and to switch me back to older habits.

In an early version, I had chicken little on the ground.

I had a bit of a break through one night when my partner and I went to the movies. We have a wonderful cinema here in town on the campus of Indiana University. One night they were showing Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 comedy "The Trouble with Harry." I hadn't seen the film in over 20 years so I was delightfully surprised when I saw the opening credits. They were drawn by an uncredited Saul Steinberg in a style reminiscent of Paul Klee. They had the charm of a child's drawing but the sophistication of a mid-century New Yorker cartoon.

My final image that I ended up submitting to the contest.

When I got home, I tried to recall the images from the credits. In the credits, the camera pans from left to right across drawings consisting mostly of stylized plants and trees. There are a few birds in the drawing and they are all looking to the right. The camera continues to pan in that direction and it eventually comes to a stop, showing us what the birds have been looking at - a man's corpse. What I particularly loved about these credits was the stylized look of the plants, trees and flowers and those are what I tried to recreate in my re-imagined scene from "Chicken Little." You can can see what I came up with in the last image on the right.

The winner was supposed to be announced on January 2nd, but since today is January 3rd, it looks like I didn't win. But that's okay, I learned a lot from this challenge and I've got two new pieces for my portfolio.

Illustration Friday - Separated

2011-12-15T17:59:00.000-05:00

I've been very busy getting ready for one more holiday craft fair so I only had time to do a quick sketch for this week's word which is 'Separated.' I'm not sure what made me think of this idea, other than that I know how painful it can be to be separated from an animal that you love.

At one point in the development of this sketch, I had the mother looking very mean and perturbed by her child's behavior. But I decided to go back to a more worried looking mom. You can see the sketch of the mean mom below.

SALE in my Etsy Shop

2011-11-28T07:28:00.001-05:00

I am currently having a Cyber Monday Sale in my Etsy shop. Through midnight tonight (November 28th) you can receive 15% off of your entire purchase by entering the code CYBERMONDAY15 at checkout. In my shop you can find prints of my work, bookmarks, jewelry (including men's tie tacks and cuff links), greeting cards (Christmas, holiday, easter, Valentine's Day, birthday and thank you cards) and a selection of vintage items, including some beautiful mid-century aprons.

Below are just a few of the items you'll find in my shop, which you can find at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/vpauld

reproductions of vintage Christmas cards

glass tile pendant and snake chain necklace

typographic print of a George Burns quote

Reading Bear bookmark

12 pack of notecards featuring my Celestial Creature designs

glass tile pendant

werewolf cuff links

vintage costume jewelry

vintage mid-century apron

Illustration Friday - Vanity

2011-11-23T09:56:00.001-05:00

It seems like ages since I've posted anything new in this blog. It's been a busy month, getting ready for several craft shows, designing and making new things, running my Etsy shop and working on an entry for Tomie dePaola's SCBWI contest have taken up most of my time.

This week's word for the 'Illustration Friday,' challenge is "Vanity." I really had hoped to create something new to illustrate the word, but once again I feel pressed for time, so, I dug up an illustration I did for 'Instinct' magazine's health column back in 2005. I believe the article that accompanied the illustration was about men's hair loss and products on the market that claim to slow it down.

As someone who is bald himself, I can understand the desire to try out hair loss remedies. If there was a magic pill that was 100% effective and worked without side effects to give me back all the hair I had as a youth, I'd certainly take it. Why? Because I guess I'm vain. Isn't that why most people use beauty products, wrinkle removers and similar concoctions that claim to make a person look young again, because of vanity? Everyone wants to look their best, so there's nothing wrong with a little vanity. If nobody cared about how they looked, it certainly wouldn't be pleasant to go out for an evening on the town. No one enjoys looking at a bunch of slobs when they go out for a nice dinner. Now that I've been bald for almost half my life, I've learned to accept the fact that I'll never see myself with a full head of hair again. That doesn't mean I don't miss my hair, it just means I'm not going to throw away my life savings trying to pursue dreams of a youthful appearance. Besides being bald has its advantages, I don't ever have to worry about waking up with 'bed head' hair.

I managed to find the original sketch I submitted to the art director and one of the initial stages of the painting. You can see both of those below. Most of the painting was done in Corel Painter and the textures and lighting effects were then added in Photoshop.

the digital watercolor sketch I sent to the art director for approval

An early stage of the painting before the shading was blended and before the textures were added.

Illustration Friday - Scattered

2011-10-20T17:42:00.000-04:00

Click on image to see it larger.

Walking my dog, I see lots of squirrels. My dog has a squirrel obsession, so we often end up following them. I would never let my dog catch a squirrel (at least not intentionally) but I do let her 'be a dog,' and engage in her instincts by allowing her to track them up into a tree. Once the squirrels are safely sitting in the trees above us, my dog is perfectly content to sit beneath the tree and stare up at them for as long as I will allow her to do so. Some of the squirrels are quite brave and will climb part way back down the tree to check us out. I always have my camera with me so while my dog is fixated on the squirrel, I try and take pictures of them.

One thing I notice while standing under the squirrel-laden trees is how many acorns and leaves are scattered about on the lawn. So, when I read that this week's 'Illustration Friday' challenge was the word "Scattered," I decided to do something with squirrels and scattered acorns.

I started out by doing some sketches based on a couple of the squirrel photos I had taken. At this point I wasn't sure in what direction I was going to take this image, but I kept sketching. As I worked on it, I decided I would do an image of a mother squirrel who has discovered that her son has scattered their acorns all over the floor of their den.

I finally decided I would put clothes on the squirrels. You can see at this stage I also decided to change the position of the mother squirrel's arms.

I thought the female squirrel looked too young and not at all like the mother of the other one, so in order to age her, I gave her a few extra pounds and put her in an apron.

At this point, it was just a matter of shading things in. I created the image entirely in Corel Painter 12. For the most part I used the 'Real 2B Pencil' brush, but for the background, which I created on a separate layer, I used the 'Real Sumi-e Wet Brush.'

I decided that I wanted to make the mother appear to be backlit so I added another layer and created some darker shading. Once I had the shading the way I wanted it, I collapsed the various layers I had created so that it would be easier to do blending and smoothing out of the overall image.

How Would You Hibernate? - Illustration Friday

2011-10-03T19:18:00.000-04:00

This week, the word challenge for 'Illustration Friday' was "Hibernate." In announcing the challenge, the host of the site provided this quote from Anais Nin:

"You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death."

Hibernate detail

This is not how I picture hibernation. First of all, I don't think of it as a restless condition. Restful, yes, but not restless. An absence of pleasure? I suppose that would be true if you define hibernation as withdrawing from life. My idea of hibernating is to stay in bed, which can be a most pleasurable thing to do, especially if one has a good stack of books at the bedside. I suppose my idea of hibernation is probably closer to the concept of cocooning. In other words, not going anywhere, staying inside surrounded by the things that comfort you.

When I think of hibernation, I always think of bears. So, in my illustration I have depicted a bear, cozy in bed with a couple of stacks of books. He's not quite ready to hibernate yet, he wants to spend some time reading first. I've also given him a pal - down at the foot of the bed, is a little mouse with his own blanket and pillows and even his own books (see detail at right, click on images to see them larger).

I created this image in Corel Painter 12 and I worked in a slightly different manner than I have in the past. First of all, I spent more time on my pencil sketch. I did a number of sketches until I got the bear looking just right. Once I had the bear the way I wanted him to look, I tightened up the sketch and made a cleaner drawing. In the past, I've inked in my drawings, but this time I decided I would keep the sketch visible and not use any ink pens. Another thing I did that I don't usually do was to create selections so that I could paint in areas while protecting others. I created the selections by creating new alpha channels and painting the areas I wanted to protect in opaque white on the alpha channel. Once I had the areas painted that I wanted to protect (think of this as applying a frisket mask to watercolor paper), it was easy to load and save these areas as selections.

First sketch

Second Sketch

Third Sketch

Fourth Sketch

Fifth Sketch

Final Sketch

Starting to paint, I protected certain areas by using selections created from alpha channels

Screen shot showing selection

Almost done. I completed the illustration by adding some darks and some colored pencil details

How to Be Ferocious - Illustration Friday - Ferocious

2011-09-27T12:21:00.001-04:00

For this week's 'Illustration Friday' challenge, which is the word "Ferocious," I stuck with the first idea that popped into my head, which was little children acting like ferocious beasts. I started off by doing some digital sketches using the 2B pencil brush in Painter 12. Originally I thought I would do a whole series of sketches, but I ended up just doing two which I then painted using Painter 12's new watercolor brushes (which I really like by the way).

I started out with a sketch of a child wearing a headband with attached animal ears. A long, cloth belt tied around the waist makes a tail. He/She (at this point the sex hadn't been decided) is trying to scare a kitten.

I then did another sketch, adding a boy in a similar pose but facing the opposite direction.

As I began to refine the sketches, the first child turned into a little girl in her pajamas. She is imitating the lion that is depicted on her pajama top. The little boy is trying to frighten a puppy. As I refined him, I gave him pajamas with a dinosaur on the top and put him in slippers that looked like alligator heads.

After finishing and cleaning up the sketches, I began painting them using Painter 12's new watercolor brushes. For painting the figures I used the Digital Watercolor 'New Simple Water' brush and the 'Coarse Mop Brush.' For the blue background, I used one of my favorites of the new brushes that come with Painter 12 - the Real Watercolor 'Fractal Wash' brush. This brush acts and looks like a real wet wash, and the speed at which it paints is greatly improved over previous versions. It's a great brush for adding a wet looking, fuzzy background.

At this point, I also added in another sketch of the first little girl, showing her sneaking up on the kitten. I liked the idea of showing a sequence, but it wasn't going to work with the image of the little boy and the dog, so I decided to split the illustration into two illustrations. The boy and the dog now became a separate image.

Illustration Friday - Mesmerizing

2011-09-20T09:10:00.000-04:00

So, from that experience I came up with the idea of a waiting room filled with children. All of the children in the room, with the exception of one little girl, find the TV to be mesmerizing. The child who is not watching the TV, is mesmerized by her book and would rather read. This is my first image that I started and finished using the new Painter 12 upgrade (I did take a side trip into Photoshop to add some filters, but more about that in a minute).

Since it's small enough to fit in my pocket, I almost always carry my camera with me. For this illustration I consulted a reference photo that I took while in the auto-shop waiting room (see photo at right). From there, I made a digital sketch. I knew I wanted to have the little girl and her book off to one side of the image, so I started by arranging the chairs and figures. After the initial sketch, I did another one where I refined the figures and darkened the lines.

Once I was happy with the sketch, I started doing some coloring. On a separate layer, I filled the canvas with a soft yellow color to give the image some overall warmth. Then, using the Digital Watercolor 'New Simple Water' brush, I began to color in the background and shapes. You can see my progress in the images below (Click on any image to see it larger).

As I worked, I created lots of layers so that I would have the flexibility of changing the opacity of different objects and adding special filters to some areas. When everything was colored, I saved the image as a Photoshop file and then opened the image in Photoshop CS4. In Photoshop, I used a third-party filter called Mister Retro (made by Permanent Press) to add some speckled texture to the various layers of color. The second to the last image in the progression (see below), shows the image with all of the coloring finished in Painter, prior to adding the filters. The last image in the progression shows a screen shot of the finished image, re-opened in Painter, after the Mister Retro photoshop filters had been applied. In this image, you can see all of the layers I created while working. I reopened the image in Painter in order to add some shadows on the little girl and under the chairs. I created the shadows on their own layer and painted them using Painter's Smart Strokes 'Textured Chalk' brush.

What Mesmerizes You? I.F. Mesmerizing

2011-09-19T13:57:00.002-04:00

I had several ideas for this week's 'Illustration Friday,' which this week is the word "mesmerizing." The idea I ended up using came to me while I was sitting in an auto-shop waiting room, waiting to get my oil changed and my tires rotated. There was a big screen TV in the room that was set to a channel playing old sitcoms. I had brought a book to read, but I had a hard time concentrating on it. The giant TV, which was showing an old episode of 'Bewitched,' was so mesmerizing that I found my eyes constantly drifting over to look at it. Since there was no one else in the room, I finally got up and turned the sound down, which helped a little as far as concentrating on my book went.

So, from that experience I came up with the idea of a waiting room filled with children. All of the children in the room, with the exception of one little girl, find the TV to be mesmerizing. The child who is the exception, would rather read her book. This is my first image that I started and finished using the new Painter 12 upgrade (I did take a side trip into Photoshop to add some filters, but more about that in a minute).

Since it's small enough to fit in my pocket, I almost always carry my camera with me. For this illustration I consulted a reference photo that I took while in the auto-shop waiting room (see photo at right). From there, I made a digital sketch. I knew I wanted to have the little girl and her book off to one side of the image, so I started by arranging the chairs and figures. After the initial sketch, I did another one where I refined the figures and darkened the lines.

Once I was happy with the sketch, I started doing some coloring. On a separate layer, I filled the canvas with a soft yellow color to give the image some overall warmth. Then, using the Digital Watercolor 'New Simple Water' brush, I began to color in the background and shapes. You can see my progress in the images below (Click on any image to see it larger).

As I worked, I created lots of layers so that I would have the flexibility of changing the opacity of different objects and adding special filters to some areas. When everything was colored, I saved the image as a Photoshop file and then opened the image in Photoshop CS4. In Photoshop, I used a third-party filter called Mister Retro (made by Permanent Press) to add some speckled texture to the various layers of color. The second to the last image in the progression (see below), shows the image with all of the coloring finished in Painter, prior to adding the filters. The last image in the progression shows a screen shot of the finished image, re-opened in Painter, after the Mister Retro photoshop filters had been applied. In this image, you can see all of the layers I created while working. I reopened the image in Painter in order to add some shadows on the little girl and under the chairs. I created the shadows on their own layer and painted them using Painter's Smart Strokes 'Textured Chalk' brush.

Illustration Friday - Boundaries

2011-09-14T20:22:00.000-04:00

This week's word challenge was 'Boundaries,' and I put off working on it all week. Originally I thought I would do something showing a boundary between light and dark or night and day, but I didn't have a clear enough vision in my head of what it would look like. So, instead I came up with something else entirely. My new idea was inspired by a sweet illustration I saw by Barbara Cooney in the 1949 book, "Read Me Another Story." It shows a little hen standing in the middle of a pen. Her world definitely has boundaries. In my image, a fence is a boundary that is keeping a little rabbit out of the lettuce patch (You can click on the illustration to see it larger).

I experimented with a technique I don't usually work in - a digital scratchboard technique. My original digital sketch was done in Painter 11. A few days ago I finally succumbed to an email from Corel with details on a special upgrade deal for Painter 12. I bit the bullet and purchased it and it arrived today. I could have finished this image in version 11, but I was anxious to get my feet wet with the upgrade so I finished the image in version 12 (more about it in a future blog).

On the right, you can see my original sketch. You'll notice that originally, I showed much more of the garden. As I worked, I decided to zoom in a bit and bring the viewer closer to the rabbit.

Below is the Barbara Cooney illustration that was my inspiration.

Illustration Friday - Mysterious

2011-09-04T18:57:00.000-04:00

This week's "Illustration Friday" challenge is the word 'Mysterious.' I had originally planned to create a digital pen and ink image of a mysterious Victorian-style house under a full moon, but after I started work on it, I realized it was going to take me a while, so I decided to go in another direction. While going through some of my children's books I found an illustration by Alice and Martin Provensen of a young girl holding an egg. Looking at that image led me to think about a young girl holding a mysterious glowing sphere, that has her under a spell.

I created this painting in Corel Painter 11 and worked rather quickly; I think I finished it in under 45 minutes. I first created a digital pencil sketch. Once I was happy with the sketch, I began to add some washes of color. I started with a pale yellowish-brown and then kept adding washes until I got some nice darks in the background. I primarily used the New Simple Water brush and the Coarse Mop Brush to do the watercolors. For the ink lines I wanted to have a line that appeared to be bleeding, so I used a Leaky Pen brush that I modified in the Brush Creator palette.

Have You Ever Made a Prank Call? Illustration Friday - Disguise

2011-08-31T13:12:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I read an article about how to create blog headlines that will catch the attention of readers. One of the ways suggested was to make the headline a question. Lest you think my headline is just an attention getter and has no relation to this week's post, read on.

The word for this week's Illustration Friday is "Disguise." I put off working on this challenge all week. I just didn't feel inspired. Yesterday I sat down and decided I would do something, even if it was just an illustration of a kid in a Halloween costume. That's a disguise, right? As I was sketching, I started to think about what else can be disguised other than one's appearance. Right away I thought about someone disguising their voice. That led me to thinking about prank phone calls. Prank phone calls made me think of the old Joan Crawford film, "I Saw What You Did and I Know Who You Are." This film, from 1965 was directed by William Castle, king of shlocky horror films and theatrical gimmicks. He's the man who put buzzers in the seats of one theatre showing his film, "The Tingler," so that when the Tingler appeared on screen, audience members would get a mild shock or tingle in their rear. Anyway, "I Saw What You Did," is about two teenage girls, Libby and Kit, who make a series of prank phone calls. They call people at random and tell the person answering the phone, "I saw what you did and I know who you are." One of the people they reach has just committed a murder and is convinced that the caller is a witness. Murderous consequences ensue.

Libby and Kit get in over their heads

So that was my inspiration for this week's illustration. I googled a few photos of telephones and found a photo from the film that served as further inspiration.

I didn't want to try and copy the photo, I wanted to make my kids younger, but I did reference it from time to time to look at how the phone was held and the lighting effects on the girl's hairstyles. I had a real problem designing the girl on the right. I sketched several versions of her until I finally managed to get her to look the way I imagined her in my head. You can see some of my earlier sketches below.

In creating this illustration, I did a series of preliminary digital pencil sketches in Painter 11. To create the final illustration, I primarily used three of Painter's brushes: the Dull Conte brush, the Acrylic Captured Bristle, and the Grainy Water Blender. For some of the details I used the Real Sharp Colored Pencil brush and for adjusting the shading, I used the Broad Water Brush. I started by blocking out my shades of gray, then went in and did some blending. I then added some details, did some more blending, added more shading, then more blending, etc. I went back and forth this way for quite a while. I ended up spending about 4 hours on this illustration, which was much longer than I had originally anticipated it would take. Unlike how I usually work, I created most of the image on one layer. The exception was the phone cord which I gave its own layer so that I could blend and adjust the figures behind it without obscuring the coiled cord details.

Here are some of the early sketches. My original drawing consisted of a lone girl sitting on her bed. She is holding a cloth over the phone receiver to disguise her voice. I wasn't happy with this and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to paint the cloth convincingly enough. Since it would be obscuring part of the phone, I was afraid it would end up confusing the viewers. So in the next version, I added the second girl, who is leaning toward her friend so she can listen in. I also decided to get rid of the cloth. Instead, I decided to show the caller placing her hand over the receiver. That way I wouldn't be hiding any of the phone.

By the way, my experience with prank phone calls is pretty limited. I do remember as a kid making a few with my sister and cousins. I think we called people and asked them if their refrigerator was running. When they said, "Yes, it is," we replied, "Well, you'd better run and catch it."

Interview by Karen McQuestion

2011-08-26T17:39:00.000-04:00

This past summer I was hired by AmazonEncore (Amazon.com's new publishing division) to create 15 black and white illustrations for author Karen McQuestion's fantasy, "Secrets of the Magic Ring," which is due out in November. Karen and I exchanged quite a few emails while I was working on the job. I sent her sketches and she would write back with comments. She was a great author to work with because she only requested two small changes! As part of the publicity campaign for the book, Amazon asked Karen to come up with some questions for me, related to illustrating her book. Unfortunately, because of space limitations, Amazon won't be posting the entire interview. But I have no space limitations on my blog, so, below is the full-length version of the interview.

True confession—before I knew for sure that you’d be doing the artwork for my book, I secretly stalked your website and blog and was so impressed! The examples of your work show very diverse styles. How did you become so versatile?

First off, thanks for the compliment. I’m always thrilled when someone tells me that they were impressed by my work. As far as my versatility goes, I think in order to compete in today’s competitive illustration market, an illustrator needs to be versatile. But actually I think any versatility that I may have achieved is probably due to my career-long search for a style. As an aspiring children’s book illustrator, I’ve heard over and over again how important it is to develop a personal style. I’ve always worried that my work was too “all over the map” and that I didn’t have a style. I’ve been doing my work digitally for over twenty years, and in the digital realm it’s much easier to explore and take risks. If you make a mistake you can “undo” it and you can save multiple versions of the same image. I also have so many different illustrators that have influenced me that I often find myself creating challenges to see if I can do something in their style. I suppose I could say that’s how I stumbled upon any versatility that you may or may not see in my work.

When my editor told me you were available to do the illustrations for Secrets of the Magic Ring I was over-the-moon thrilled. How did you prepare for the project?

Well, first off I read the manuscript straight through. Then I went back over it for a second pass and underlined all of the passages that I felt had visual potential. When Terry Goodman, your editor, forwarded me one of your emails where you said you were a fan of N. M. Bodecker, the illustrator of Edward Eager’s books, I went to our public library and checked out all of his books so I could study the illustrations. Bodecker has a wonderful style, he was especially good at using patterns and stylizing things like trees and plants I learned a lot from looking at his work, especially when it came to drawing backgrounds - trees, plant detail, etc.

With publishers tightening their belts, fewer middle grade books are now illustrated. What are your thoughts on this?

Of course as an illustrator this is something that directly affects my profession so it makes me sad. As an avid reader of children’s middle grade fiction, it also makes me sad, especially when I browse the books in our library’s children’s classics section and I see the beautiful pen and ink illustrations that filled so many of the books from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. I know that when I was a child, I would always go for the books that had pictures in them. When starting to read a book, I would find and look at all of the pictures first because then I found it fun to search for the accompanying text while I was reading. When I would get to the text that was being illustrated, I would always go back and forth between the picture and the text to see how the artist interpreted the author’s words. I still do that.

sketch of Vicky falling

We had a fun back and forth via email while you were working on this project. At one point, you showed me a preliminary drawing of Aunt Vicky falling into a pool. I realized then that I hadn’t done a very good job describing her appearance. After explaining that Vicky was a glamorous aunt, I added more description to the text, and you made changes to the illustration. Are you willing to share the initial sketch and the final illustration?

Final illustration with more
glamorous Vicky

I’d be happy to share the original sketch. I was glad that you commented on my original drawing of Vicky because looking at my original drawing now, I can see that I made her look too generic. When you mentioned the name of a particular celebrity as an idea for how you imagined she should look, that was a big help. I even googled that celebrity to see how she wore her hair, so that I could give Vicky a more glamorous looking hairstyle.

Do you draw from memory?

Not entirely. I usually do a rough layout sketch of where I want the figures placed and then I use various types of guides to help me flesh things out. For example, I will often google images of plants and animals to use as drawing aids. Sometimes I will even google things like women’s hairstyles. For the dog, Clem, in your book, Secrets of the Magic Ring, I looked at photographs of a breed of dog called an Otterhound. While I was working on the illustrations that featured Clem, I found several images on the internet that I kept open on my desktop while I worked. Also, for reference, I used a program called “Poser,” that allows you to pose and set up human and animal mannequins in three dimensional space. You can even change the lighting on them to use as an aid in creating your shadows. That program was an invaluable tool on this job, especially for the illustrations that required unusual perspectives, like the scene where Paul is climbing up the ladder and sees Henry standing above him. For filling in simple background details, for example, the objects you might see in a laundry room, I usually just use my imagination and memory.

Can you tell us about some of your influences?

I have a lot of favorite artists, all of whom I guess could be considered influences. For the black and white work I did in this book, I was heavily influenced by the works of Erik Blegvad, N.M. Bodecker and Louis Darling. Blegvad has illustrated lots of children’s books including Mary Norton’s “Bed-knob and Broomstick,” Judith Viorst’s “The Tenth Good Thing About Barney,” and Marjorie Winslow’s “Mud Pies and Other Recipes.” As I mentioned before, Bodecker illustrated the Edward Eager Books, as well as other books that he himself wrote, like “Hurry, Hurry Mary Dear,” which is a wonderful book of his nonsense poems. Louis Darling illustrated a number of children’s classics, including Beverly Cleary’s “Henry Huggins” and her Ramona Books. Darling also illustrated one of my childhood favorites, Oliver Butterworth’s “The Enormous Egg.” I have also been influenced by people like Mary Blair, Gustav Tenggren, J.P. Miller, Tibor Gergely, John Schoenherr, David Small and many more.

How old were you when you knew you wanted to be an artist?

I knew I wanted to be an artist from a very young age. I had asthma as a kid and my mother would often keep me inside. In addition, I was also somewhat sickly and would stay home from school a lot. My mom encouraged me to draw. She was a frustrated artist herself and had lots of talent which unfortunately, once she started raising a family, she didn’t get to use very often. Before she had my older brother, she had enrolled in the Famous Artists Correspondence school. As part of that course she was sent three large art instruction books. The books covered everything from drawing basic forms, to human anatomy. Even though she never finished the course, she kept the books and when I showed an interest in drawing, she gave them to me. I spent a lot of time looking at those books, which I still have by the way, and would often copy images out of them. I guess I’d have to say that those books were my first drawing teachers.

You took a drawing I’d thought was perfect, redid the scene from a different angle and made it even better. Can you show us the before and after, and explain what you did and why?”

This image was somewhat of a challenge. I had to try and figure out a way to show the two children, Paul and Cecelia, and the dog Clem while they were sitting inside their house watching a swimming pool being dug outside their window. I know that kids, especially little boys, seem to like pictures of digging equipment and trucks. Because of that, I wanted to make the backhoe somewhat prominent. Because the children were sitting in the house I had two choices: I could show the children from behind and have the backhoe in the background, or I could have the backhoe in the foreground and the two children could be seen inside the house in the background. Because I didn’t want to show the backs of the children, I decided to go for the second option. But since they were going to be in the background, that option meant the children were going to be quite small. I completed that illustration, which I think was perfectly fine, but after showing it to my critique group, they pointed out to me that since this was to be the first illustration in the book, the children should be the main focus. So I went back and redid the illustration from a different point of view. I did end up showing the children from the back, but instead of having them looking out the window, which would have meant you’d only see the backs of their heads, I had them looking toward one another which allowed me to show their faces in profile. It was a perfect compromise. I was really happy that I decided to re-do it, because I think it turned out to be a much stronger illustration.

original version

final version from new angle

Illustration Friday - Perennial

2011-07-24T13:00:00.003-04:00

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

2011-06-05T18:51:00.000-04:00

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

2011-05-30T10:47:00.000-04:00

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

2011-05-26T09:33:00.050-04:00

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

2011-05-20T13:57:00.001-04:00

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.

Sketchy Style

2011-05-18T13:09:00.002-04:00

I've written several posts on this blog on pen and ink work and on artists like Erik Blegvad whose black and white illustrations are some of my favorites. I've also posted several of my own pieces that I've created in black and white using Corel Painter's digital pen brushes. Most of my black and white work has been very detailed, containing lots of cross-hatching, which is extremely time consuming.

Lately, I've been reading lots of William Steig, not only his picture books, but one of his middle grade books, "Dominic," the story of a restless dog who goes out looking for adventure. "Dominic" contains some really charming black and white illustrations that are done in Steig's very loose style. Inspired by Steig, I decided I would try experimenting in a looser, sketchier style myself.

The problem that came up immediately was, 'What should I draw?' I scanned one of the bookshelves where I keep some of my middle grade books and found one of my childhood favorites, "Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet," by Eleanor Cameron, a book with no illustrations. Because I had not read it in many years, I couldn't recall off hand any particular scenes to illustrate, so I sat down to read the first couple of chapters. The early chapters serve as an introduction to the characters and since this book is a sequel to "The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet," they set the background for what happened in the first book. The main plot point that takes place is that the boys meet Theodosius Bass who is the cousin of their old friend Tyco Bass. My first attempt showed Theodosius sitting in Tyco's old chair while the boys are standing nearby. But I felt that showing these characters just sitting and standing around was uninteresting and boring so I read a little further until I came to a scene at the start of Chapter 2: Theodosius has been telling the boys about his wanderings around the world and his search for a place to call his own. He says: "'Once I thought the Aleutians might be the answer - but oh, the cruel winds, the fogs, the bitter cold! A great mist-ake, you might say, eh?' And he darted the boys a sudden, twinkling glance, and they grinned at one another and knew with certainty they were going to get along with Mr. Theodosius. 'Something you'll never fog-et, you mean!' burst out Chuck, and then he slapped his knee and roared with laughter. David looked disgusted, but Mr. Theo seemed to think it a fine pun, and laughed and laughed." Even though the characters are still in their same positions, there is a more lively interaction going on - Chuck is in hysterics, David's looking disgusted and Mr. Bass is laughing at Chuck's word pun. If you compare my first attempt (at top) with the final result, I think you'll agree that the second illustration, which shows something of the character's personalities, is a much better illustration.

Illustration Friday - Safari

2011-05-15T15:09:00.002-04:00

This week's word for the 'Illustration Friday' challenge is "Safari," a word that in previous generations would have conjured up images of the 'great white hunter,' with his big guns and a retinue of porters. Fortunately, for the most part, that sort of safari is a thing of the past. Nowadays, those who actually go on safaris, go with a camera in hand instead of a gun. I love taking pictures of animals, so I would love someday to go on a photo-shooting safari. Anyway, the idea of a photo safari made me think of a boy on a backyard safari, stalking the family cat with his camera.

In my first sketch, I had the boy peeking at the cat, who's trying to sleep, through the fronds of a potted palm. I wasn't happy with the boy's pose, he was too static. Sense I wanted to convey the idea that he was stalking the cat, I wanted more of a sense of movement. Before creating a new sketch, I did what I often do when I need inspiration or a reference for movement, I consulted one of my books on cartooning and animation. In this case I consulted the book "Animation," by Preston Blair. I've had this book for years, probably since I was in high school, a time when I had dreams of becoming an animator. It's a thin, paperback book, part of the Walter T. Foster "How to Draw" art book series that has been around for years (over 80 years, according to their website).

I've used this book many times in the past, it's a great resource for designing cartoon-style characters and learning exaggerated movements. It has a great page dedicated entirely to a 'sneak' animation cycle, (see page detail at left) which is what I used as a reference for my second sketch.

My digital pencil sketches as well as the finished piece were created using Corel Painter 11. In the final illustration, I used Painter's New Simple Water and Coarse Mop Brush watercolor brushes, as well as some of their pen brushes which I customized slightly to produce a more ragged, leaky looking line.

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

2011-05-11T20:04:00.000-04:00

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

2011-05-09T11:42:00.171-04:00

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

2011-04-19T09:24:00.000-04:00

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.