4th of July - Work in Progress

I meant to have this done by the 4th, but oh well. The idea only came to me a couple of days ago, so I drew it out, then started rendering, and of course 'life' happened in between there (nothing bad - just stuff). This is a self-promo piece, so it doesn't have a real deadline, so I guess its OK. I'll just be really really early for next year! heh

Anyway - you can see where I'm going with this I think. I'm going back to this style for my children's book work. I used to work like this a lot, then . . . well, I'll spare you a long boring essay about why I shifted gears and started doing more 'fine art' kind of work. The time I've spent refining my colored pencil style will definitely come in handy here, and has not been time wasted.

"Style" is a hard thing to describe. I call this my "round, shapey people" look. Everyone I draw looks very well fed, and I have a sort of architectural way of designing things. Everything fits together "just so". Its tight, and fully rendered, and there's not a hair out of place (unless its on purpose!).

The outfits these guys are wearing are kind of a mash-up of different Revolutionary War and 'fife and drum corps' uniforms. Most are some combination of red, white and blue, and some are fancier than others. I'm not doing powdered wigs, but will give them each their real hair (partly to get some more color in there).

Hope you all have a good 4th of July, if you're here in the States, and celebrate. We have hot dogs and potato salad and apple pie all ready to go. No fireworks though. They're illegal here, but of course that doesn't stop everyone else from doing them (much to my chagrin - they scare all the animals so). I feel very very thankful for the freedom to be able to draw and color pictures like this all day, for a living, and am so grateful for everyone who has fought for our collective freedoms as a nation to sit and color, and do everything else we do as free people!