APRIL in August

April Showers Bring . . . Fishes 

I'm entering this in a calendar contest for the SCBWI conference in September. Any member can illustrate a month and if they win it will appear in a printed calendar for the Northern Ohio Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Fingers are crossed.
     It is done almost entirely digitally except for the preliminary sketch which I dropped into Corel Painter.  I can't imagine giving up the good old pencil for sketching out ideas. Originally the background was a house but I didn't think it had the visual impact that this background has. That's what I love about working digitally. You can change your mind in a very big way without starting completely over.

Here's the little seed for the idea that started in my sketchbook.

Update: I won the contest with the most votes! Yay! My image was used for the month of September!

Illustration Friday - GROW

A quick (well, relatively quick) digital sketch for the word GROW, which is exactly what my kids did, and they did it well - especially my 6'5" son.  Now that my husband and I are nearly empty nesters, I've been thinking quite a bit about moving to a new home with features more suited to us and the next phase of our lives. One of the saddest things we'll be leaving behind is the growth chart in our kitchen. 

Candied Marbles

Candied Marbles

Colored Pencil 6 1/2" x 16 1/2"

I finished this a couple of weeks ago.  I hadn't worked in colored pencil for quite a while.  They are nice and neat, no mess, no big clean up. They were my medium of choice when my kids were small because they are easy to get out and put away. I've been a little spoiled recently with digital art - being able to correct mistakes and add highlights. I have to do more planning ahead with colored pencil and I work very closely with my photograph.  It's more tedious but a great exercise in patience and perseverance.

Illustration Friday - TREASURE

One man's trash . . . 

     I did this one in several steps.  I started with a very rough pencil sketch in my sketchbook (brainstorming phase). Once I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do, I sketched it digitally so that I could get a good plan for my color and value. Here's that one:

My original plan was to use this as something to copy from and I wanted to have a very nice finished watercolor. Here's my watercolor:

I just didn't have enough patience for the painting and I was fighting against the paper - I wasn't using the best kind for my painting style. I'm also a bit spoiled with being able to fix any mistakes in the computer, so I dropped it back into the digital world for reworking.  There are some areas of the digital sketch that I like more, but all in all I'm happiest with my finished piece.

SCBWI - DIVERSE

 
     I did this for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators monthly illustration prompt - DIVERSE
     I did the original in acrylics on canvas, then dropped it in to the computer to work on it some more.

Here's the original painting.

Illustration Friday - SHARP

"Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man"

and if you're a nerd (like me and proud of it) you might go crazy 'bout a sharpened pencil too.

Quick digital sketch.