Cahill Irish Porter Cheddar

I guess this is my nod to St. Patrick's Day, this being an Irish cheese and all. It even has green in it!

This was fun to do. I worked 'live', and had to remember to keep putting the cheese back in the frig in between sittings. It kind of 'sweats' if you leave it out too long, not to mention getting hard and dried out.

This is the oddest cheese, and really does have that much green in it (its not mold). It looks like a stone walkway or wall or something, with a chocolate coating.

I used all Prismacolors for this.

I think a blue cheese will be next. They're not as much fun to eat, but they're pretty!

Moody cheese wip

This is what I'm working on.

Its a wedge of cool cheese that looks like marble. It has port wine in it, and the rind looks like chocolate. Yum!

This is part of the Pantry series I'm starting. I decided to do mini series within that main one; like, a set of cheeses, then something else, then something else. All things that one would find in a pantry. And I want to make them all floating in the sky.

This one shows the top, side, and bottom of the wedge. I don't need to do a section view, since this already is a section (of the whole wheel of cheese).

I picked a nice moody cloudy sky, since I thought greyish colors would work better with the deep tones of the cheese than bright sunny blue sky. It also seemed to fit the personality of the cheese. (Its an Irish cheese.)

This is 8 x 10, Prismacolors on Stonehenge.

Back to work!

Kitty disguises

You may remember me doing this kitty in disguises a while back. I did two versions, and neither was just right, so this is the third and final one. I think I finally got him just way I want him. (Yes, I know he doesn't have whiskers. He will.)

(click on the images to see them larger)

I also reworked the trench coat disguise, and added a second version with a newspaper and briefcase, and a bowler hat. It makes him more of a British spy kitty.

Every kitty going undercover needs a good sushi chef disguise. Think of all that fish!

A poodle disguise is also handy if you want access to some chi-chi house, where bowls of fresh meat are dispensed. An alternate sweater ensemble for "walkies" is necessary if you're going to do it right.

And last but not least is a 'nice little old lady who likes birdies' disguise.

Paper dolls are coming, soon, really! I just have to figure out exactly how to do them is all. Once I get the first set figured out I plan to do more. Its always that "first one" of whatever it is that takes the most work, then its smooth sailing from there.

I'm open to suggestions for other paper doll ideas. Not disguises - I want to do other kitties doing other things. I actually already have a long list of ideas, but would love any input you might have!

I am a yam.

"I am a yam. I am." © Paula Pertile

(click to see it larger)

Well no, not me. The yam in the picture, silly.

This is a piece to test an idea. I like to draw food. And clouds. And I like to label things. So I thought well let's see what would happen if I did them all in one picture. I also like to draw things floating. So I think this is very "me".
The next one will be a further exploration of the idea, and a bigger piece.
This is 5 x7, Polychromos on Stonehenge.

Why a yam? Why not. A good while back I said I wanted to do a "Pantry" series. I still do. And I figure that if I do, I should include a little bit of everything - not just fancy pies and tarts or whathaveyou. I have a sort of fascination with root vegetables anyway (I think its those stringy root bits going all which-way), and the colors are delicious, so I thought I'd start with something rather plain, like this little yam. It aged a bit in between the time I bought it, and the time I actually got around to drawing it, so it developed some character. But that made it more interesting.

What's next? Not telling. You'll be surprised.

knitting square

I've embarked upon yet another knitting adventure ~ Boxes!

Of course my camera battery died just as I started taking pictures. Of course, right? I have more of these finished. I'm experimenting with different yarns and sizes, and different types of lids (or no lids). These two are about 4 inches square, and just happen to perfectly fit a box of my little square cards, which you may or may not remember I was selling a while back.

And which I'll be selling again. I'm doing a shops upgrade and weeding out and spiffing up of things. My knitting shop has been empty for quite a while, and although I have the usual scarves and coffee sleeves in my arsenal, I wanted to wait until I had something a little different to offer before I restocked it.

The boxes were an idea that I was determined to figure out. I did some (OK lots) of trial and error, with a lot of error, and almost gave up. These are knit all in one piece! so no seams. I've seen boxes done in pieces, then sewn together, and thought they looked clunky (no offense to anyone reading here who may have knit one of those). I really wanted to do something kind of architectural and clean.

They have to be knit very 'tight' to create a stiff enough fabric to stand up without support, but I like that they're also flexible. Once I figured out the pattern and technique and made ONE successfully, I was so happy! They aren't particularly difficult (now that I know what I'm doing), but they're not fast, either. I will do a few more, put them up in the shop and see how they do. I have another idea for a braided thing, not like this exactly, but along the same lines ~

only way harder. way harder. If I can make it work I will be feeling pretty special.

Last week I did some computer upgrades, and boy does it feel nice to have everything running more up to speed. I had a guy come over and do the installs for me, and although everything went OK, I was very glad to have him here. Its like taking the car to the 'car guy' - some things are better left to the professionals. This guy was very young and so smart, it was awesome. One of the things I upgraded was my Adobe CS, and so now I have the version that will let you 'publish to ebook' or whatever it is, exactly. Woohoo! Can't wait to get onboard that train. Better a little late than never.

So now its back to the needles for me today. The kitties are enjoying sun naps in the windows and out on the back porch. And Downton Abbey is on again tonight, so life is good.

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.

~~~~~~

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.)