Here is the Bible story from the last post, finished.

(click to see it larger)

This is a Jewish version of a Bible story, so the clothes and beards and even hand gestures had to be very specific.

I originally had the guy in front's right hand with his fingers slightly apart, which made a nicer design - but learned that that particular gesture is a type of blessing, and was asked to make the fingers all be close together instead.

The tallits were originally done as a 'shawl' type design, but it was decided that this 'poncho' style was more historically accurate.

The beards had to be a certain length.

Etc., etc., etc. 

So this has been an interesting project so far! And very humbling to have rabbis reviewing my work. And a perfect example of the difference between being an illustrator (doing a piece to fit someone else's specs) and doing your own 'fine art' work. 

I did this with mostly a black Polychromo and a little Lyra Soft Black (both oil based pencils) on Stonehenge paper.

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Other things in the works:

paper dolls, a colored pencil tutorial, a book dummy (there's always a book dummy in the works, isn't there?), some knitting!, some drawings of knitting, and some architectural food pieces. 

I know!

And 'the guy' is coming this week to upgrade my Mac OS for me and install a newer version of Photoshop and all, so I will finally be able to get up to speed with ebooks, hopefully. Looking forward to that "publish to ebook" function in PS5.5!

The SCBWI Winter Conference is going on as we speak. Here's a blog devoted just to that if you want to peek in.

The Tomie de Paola contest winners are here.

An unofficial gallery of some of the contest entries can be seen here.

The Caldecott winners were announced last week. See them here.

The CPSA Explore This! 8 list accepted entries can be seen here. (no pictures, just a text list)

And finally, the prospectus for the upcoming CPSA 20th International Exhibition can be downloaded here.

I'm so glad to be over this awful cold I had for way too long, and am anxious to get back to work. How about you? What are you working on? 

In Progress

Happy New Year! Can't believe we're two weeks into it already. It will be Christmas again before you know it.

Anyways, I've been taking a bit of a blogging break. Everything I'm working on at the moment is in progress, or half baked, or in the planning and figuring out stages. And that doesn't always make for interesting blogging.

But thought I'd better pop in with something, just to let everyone know I haven't perished from the drought that seems to be taking over California this winter. Seriously. Brown lawns, people in t-shirts and flip flops, its appalling. We're supposed to be wearing chunky sweaters and sipping cocoa by the fire. I'm cranky.

So this is one of the things I'm working on that's in progress. Can't say anything about it, sorry. But its a Bible tale, and this is a first drawing, which I will now take to finish. It will be in black and white, yay!

(click to see it bigger)

I had fun researching Bible times and Jewish-wear. One of the perks of being an illustrator is all the things you learn, about things you never knew anything about before. Or things you thought you knew about, then find out how much you didn't know. If that makes any sense.

So its back to work for me today, no rest for the wicked. My reward will be a new episode of Downton Abbey tonight!

Silent Night

I needed a new picture book self-promo piece, and felt like doing black and white. This image came to me  from somewhere (I'm always curious about how these things "land" in your brain). I like the idea that its very very late, when absolutely everyone is asleep. There are no lights on in any of the windows. Just twinkly stars in the sky.

This was done with a Lyra Polycolor Soft Black on bristol. And many hours of just sitting there, resharpening the pencil, going darker, and darker, and darker. ("What do you do for a living?" "I sit with a sharp black pencil for hours making little tight circles on a piece of paper." "Oh ...")

Hope you're all having a nice holiday, whatever you're celebrating. I have food shopping and wrapping (ack!) and cleaning to do still, so am signing off for a few days to do all that as well as some serious eating and hopefully some merry making as well. 

Peace and goodwill and god bless us, every one! 

Drawing yarn again

Its that time of year when I get itching to knit, or at least draw it. Its fun to draw something that's not an assignment, or a commission, or with an eye toward selling it somehow. Just for fun, or to practice, or to work out an idea.

These two hearts were supposed to be an idea about joining two hearts together, but at some point I realized it could be just the opposite - two hearts coming undone! Oh well. 

This was done with Polychromos on Bristol. I defined the knitting rows with some warm grey over the pinks. Trying to make knitting look 'real' requires a good bit of standing back from the piece, or walking away and coming back and seeing it fresh - at least for me. Its easy to get caught up in the pattern of stitches, and lose site of the whole. Actually, I wasn't going for a super realistic look here, but rather an illustrative realism. 

And I do love my cables, so had to draw one. This one is a simple single cable knit on 8 stitches, with no background (usually there would be some purl stitches flanking either side). I isolated it to make it look almost like an architectural column, and left it a little flatter and graphic.

I would love to do a series of invented knitting pieces. In colored pencil though? Hmmm, not sure. I do love putting in those fuzzy bits all around with pencils - not sure it would be half the fun with paint. Hey, maybe I can do portraits, or still lifes, or house portraits - in knitting! Do you dare me to try? I think that's the kind of thing that could be unbearably tacky in real life (like, actually knitted). OK, not maybe - definitely. But maybe, just maybe, it could be kind of cool as a piece of art. Or not. I could just be tired. The holiday hoopla makes everyone just a tad loopy I think. I went out for a while today, and got in a good bit of people watching as I ate my chicken teriyaki bowl near the entrance to Barnes & Noble. Boy howdy, people are fun to watch. Some of them would look good 'knitted' I think. 

Anyways. Hope you're all having a nice holiday season with warmth and loved ones (two and four legged) and nice food. And something knitted. 

Mackintosh

A new little colored pencil piece, inspired by the Clan Macktinosh Tartan Plaid.

I used a colorless blender on this, which I don't, usually. I wanted to get a rich color, and leave some texture, but also make it blendy. I had a lot of fun developing the colors, especially where they crossed over each other. 

Its 3.5 inches square. Prismacolors on Stonehenge. I think I'll do more of these. 

Should I put them up for sale? Can't decide.

I've been busy on other things. Just finished up some all digital work, which is not what I usually do! It was fun, but I was itching to get back to my pencils.

My shops have cards and ornaments with some of my Christmasy art, if you're interested ~

The cards on Zazzle are fully customizable, so if you'd like to change the inside greeting, you may.

On CafePress I made some in Spanish as well as English, just in case you need a "Feliz Navidad" card for someone.

Its a busy time of year. Blog posts may be sparser than usual over the next few weeks, but I'll try to check in with something. Hope you're all beginning to enjoy the season!

Indecision

Sometimes you just can't decide. I have been having a bad bout of indecision the past couple of weeks, on two different projects. Thankfully, they're both things I'm doing for myself, and not for paying clients! (Those have all been straight-forward and are going well, phew.)

First up - you may remember a while back I drew this little guy, and put him in a couple of disguises. I want to develop this character more, and got to wondering if I needed to 'push' the character some.

So I came up with another version.

And now I can't decide which one I like better. I know, right? They're both cute and funny. The second one just needs a pair of devil horns and he'd be all set. They're both carrying a "book of disguises" ~ in the first one he has on shades and is hiding behind a fence or bag, and the second one is inside a bag with eye holes cut out (they're both subtle and take a bit of work to figure out).

So please tell me which one you like. Maybe I'll  need to come up with a third one, blending the two together. Any thoughts you have will help a lot. Because I just don't know. Which one would you like to see in a book, or dressed up in outfits, doing stuff? Thanks. (This is not a test, there are no right or wrong answers.)

Then. I was talking in the last post about this knitting idea I have. Well. I have just about driven myself MAD trying to figure out the best way to do it.

First I thought I was going to do a few nice pieces of knitted designs, and of course thought I'd do them in colored pencil. But what's the best technique? Below you can see some test pieces I did, trying to decide.

1. I thought all watercolor pencils would speed things up from what I usually do. Verdict - YUK.

2. A first pass with one color (Lyras), then another layer with a different red, with all my little swatches to the left. Verdict - Taking waaaaay too long, and not even looking good.

3. A different combination of watercolor pencil with dry pencil over it. Also, NO.

4. Just plain Prismacolor, fastidiously applied. NICE. But again, waaaaay too slow. Because while I was doing all these, I kept rethinking what I want to do with this idea exactly, and keep thinking "Oh, I should have done this, oh I should have done that, oh, if I did it this way, then I could do that with it ...", on and on. I need to be able to sort of mass produce the art, but still make each piece different (if that makes any sense) and need to be able to do repeats, borders, etc. and have them all match up.

So I decided to try my digital pencil technique that I worked out several posts back.

Without boring you to death, I'll just share a small snippet of how ONE experiment looks at different stages. These tries were all about finding just the right combination of texture/no texture, trying to get a rich colored pencil 'look', without having to redraw each bloody stitch on each bloody piece of art.

Somewhere along the way my brain had a meltdown. And I was relieved to have to switch over to a  'real' job for a while. I don't even want to think about doing watercolors or gouache (which I'm sure someone would suggest). Any way I do it in the end will involve a lot of time, so I just have to pick the one that makes the most sense and dig in. 

People don't realize that art is HARD sometimes. Even drawing little kitties or pretty knitting.

Stripes

This week's Illustration Friday theme is "Stripes".

I did this one a while back. Its my first 'serious', non-picture book image of knitting, done with colored pencils. It won an honorable mention in an Ann Kullberg show, so I was pretty happy with that.

I've drawn knitting in different ways for different pictures ~

And then, some of you might remember that a while back I was doing all sorts of yarn drawings ~

I have a lot of unborn ideas for yarn and knitting art that I've wanted to do, so am starting in again on a new little series that I'm kind of excited about. Its taking a while to get off the ground though, because I want to do a lot with it, and am trying to figure out a 'system' so I don't  have to reinvent the wheel each time I start a new piece. I know, with out a visual, you have no idea what I'm talking about. But I don't have anything finished yet to show. Hopefully later this week I will. Let me just say this - drawing knitting is slow tedious work, in any medium!

tic tac toe

Just had to do one. more.

This is about 4.5 inches square, all done with Prismacolors.

I used a light touch and kept these very unburnished on purpose. 

I think I'm through with candy for a while. 

Just for a while.

Speaking of Prismacolors ~

They're coming out with a new set of 150 pencils, which includes the Deco colors they had retired, as well as some other new ones. Check it out here on their blog.

And congratulations to Ester Roi for having her art featured on the new set!

And while I'm at it, congratulations to Nicole Caulfield for having her art on the new Derwent Coloursofts tin!

Fall Beans

All done!
And for sale in the shop (the original as well as a print).
These were done with Prismacolors on Stonehenge paper, and are about 4.5 x 5.5 inches.

What's next? I have some picture booky things to work on, and am also being pulled in a weird fine art / stitchery direction. The cooler weather is like fuel for me, it makes me want to make things and be productive.

Jelly Beans WIP

Continuing with the candy. These are Jelly Bellys, in some nice Fall colors.

I'm using Prismacolors. The palette just seemed right for these.

I have this and another small one lined up. So I will burrow in today and 'color'.

I mentioned last time that I started using my wee little tiny hand held sharpener because my electric one was breaking the pencils so much. Well, I'm still using it, and loving it. I find that its not any more trouble to use than the other one, and an added bonus is that its QUIET. And it sharpens to a needle point. So sometimes 'old school' rocks. I imagine it will get dull after a while, but it will be cheap to replace. (And the cats are loving that they can nap in peace.)

M&Ms

© Paula Pertile

4 x 6 inches, Prismacolors on Stonehenge

This was fun! I did exactly what I set out to do - just highlight one of each color of M & M, and leave the rest in 'black and white'. Of course the photo reference was all color, but that just seemed too predictable. Not sure what statement I was trying to make - none, really. Just wanted to try something different is all.

I went over the French Grey grisaille drawing lightly with a couple of browns - Brown Ochre and Chocolate, to warm them up a little.

I never realized that M & Ms weren't all exactly the same size, nor are they all perfectly round. Some are a bit 'off', which kind of drove me nuts. 

Another thing that's been driving me nuts is my electric sharpener. I have an Xacto School Pro, which is usually fine, but for whatever reason it EATS Prismacolors. Coloursofts, Polychromos and Luminance all hold up well. Prismacolors - break, break break, break, BREAK. After a lot of harumphing and a few bad words, I finally resorted to sharpening them by hand with a little tiny hand held sharpener - the one that comes in the Prismacolor set, actually. And it worked beautifully. I can't believe how long it took me to get the bright idea to stop using the electric one! 

Another WIP

Trying something different with this, just for fun.
I'm not saying what this is yet, but it will be obvious soon enough.

Its 4 x 6, and all done with Prismacolor French Greys so far.

Heath Bar finished

All done.

Click on this next one to see how it progressed.

Now that I have this out of my system, I can move on to other things.
I was just itching to do a piece of candy!

Heath Bar WIP

Well the cat's out of the bag now on what this is. 

Yes, I've broken into the Halloween candy. And you know I had to rip open several of these before I got one with just the right 'tear'. This is a mini, not the full sized bar. And I'm doing it a little larger than life. This is about 5.5 inches square. Polychromos on Stonehenge, my favorite.

I know I said a few posts back (when I did the invented pod drawing) that I was tired of doing "slavishly copying photo reference" kinds of pieces. But here I am. I guess it depends on the subject, and what mood I'm in. I like to do both. I really have a 'thing' for candy and candy wrappers. There's something architectural about them, discovering all the little shapes of colors hidden within. They're almost like little puzzles. oooh, maybe I should deconstruct one, and just draw all the little shapes, separated, and let people guess what they are. 

Yeah .... or maybe not. 

Hope you're all enjoying a nice Fall weekend, getting pumpkins and doing harvest kinds of things. I have some pumpkin bread calling from the kitchen, for later. I wish pumpkins were in season all year 'round! 

New WIP

I know, it doesn't look like much right now.
They never do at this stage though, do they?
I'm back to my Polychromos for this. And this is two very light layers so far.
And no, I'm purposely not telling you what it is. Yet.

I'm doing a "like my Facebook page and leave a comment" thing over on my FB page.     http://www.facebook.com/PaulaPertileArt
I will draw a name out of a hat of those people who leave a comment, and he or she will win a print of this when its finished.

This is small - about 6" square. And edible. And seasonal.
:~)

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Here's an update. Forty five colors later in about 1 square inch ...