Cross-post from Anthdrawlogy.

I’ve never tried inking in Seuss’s style before.  He had such amazing line work!

Oh yeah, hey… so it’s 2012, huh?

So I got this awesome little 7″ x 5″ watercolor sketchbook with a giant spiral binding, perfect for clipping my pencil and eraser to.  My resolution this year is to carry this thing around with me and sketch on the go.  It’s rare that I’m able to carve out hours at a time to draw, so I need to be better at filling the nooks and crannies with creativity.

Little Rex here was penciled in the Fuddrucker’s parking lot, and later inked at home with W&N brush and spider ink.

This my the third and final “process” blog entry, continued from part 2.

Once I had a solid pencil drawing, my next step was to do a value study in Photoshop.  Whether you’re aware of it or not, value is normally what you notice first when looking at an image.  I like to make this a separate step from color, so I can plan out my value choices carefully.

(This is actually a scan of a print-out, because I didn’t save the value study.)

I wanted Chicken Licken to be the primary focal point, so I made that area contain the greatest value contrast.  The sky is slightly lighter in this region, and the goose’s bill is black.  Since this is a two-page spread, I gave the left page its own focal point — Cocky Locky and Henny Penny.  My hope was that the viewer’s eye would wander around the page, mostly settling on the characters.  The swoop of the background hills draw further attention to the interaction between Chicken Licken and Turkey Lurkey.

From here, it was just a matter of applying color and texture in a way that supported my value arrangement.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series!  Feel free to leave questions or comments.  And good luck to my fellow artists!

(Continued from part 1)

The next step in my process was pretty simple: sketch, sketch, sketch.

Before I could nail down the final composition, I needed to clarify my character designs.  Although I wanted my final look to be cartoonish, I did quite a bit of research to study actual bird anatomy.  I’m a strong believer in research, even when your style strays far from realism.

When I finally began to zero in on a composition I was happy with, I shared it with my critique group and inner circle of family/friends for feedback.  I highly recommend getting as much feedback as possible in the early stages of a drawing, and be prepared to make changes along the way!

Above is the pencil sketch I used as the basis for my final piece.  From this point on, everything was done digitally.

(To be continued…)

(Continued from my previous post.)

This is my first page of thumbnails I created.  I began by transcribing the text by hand.  This may seem tedious and unnecessary, but I find that it helps me to absorb the story moments more fully.

From there, I zeroed in on the moment I wanted to capture — namely, this exchange:

“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.

There’s a lot going on in this scene, but it seems to me that the key story point is that Chicken Licken is trying to convince Turkey Lurkey that the sky is falling; Turkey Lurkey initially reacts with skepticism.  These are the two key characters, so it was important for my illustration to show exactly what they’re thinking and feeling.

I also wanted the supporting cast to have clear and unique personalities, and to be doing something interesting without upstaging the main action.  I didn’t quite nail that in these thumbnails, but I made some notes on the page.

Right off the bat I settled on a two-page spread, and mapped out where the gutter would be.  I arranged my characters around that consideration, with the followers on the left, and the leader on the right.  (In picture books, movement normally progresses from left to right.)

You can see in the third thumbnail, I moved Chicken Licken up onto Goosey Loosey’s beak.  This is a trick I learned from the book Creating Characters with Personality by Tom Bancroft (see page 131, “Going to Extremes” sidebar).  Basically, if you have two characters that are very different in size, it’s often helpful to give the smaller one something to perch on, so you can get their faces closer together.  In my illustration, I wanted to push this idea even further, and have Chicken Licken encroaching on Turkey Lurkey’s personal space.  This would help show that he’s steamrolling Turkey Lurkey into following him.

(To be continued…)

This is my entry for the 2012 SCBWI Tomie dePaola Award, which I’ve been working on during the past month. The challenge was to illustrate the following text:

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!”

I had a ton of fun with this piece.  I especially liked designing the different characters and giving them playful poses within the frame.  Win or not, it was a great learning experience, and I’m really grateful to SCBWI for hosting this competition!  Also, good luck to my crit group partners who also entered!

Cross-post from Anthdrawlogy.  This week’s theme was “Zoo.”