Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Berry Tart

Its all done! Phew. I thought I'd never finish. Being sick is a drag (some kind of 'bug', requiring lots of naps and 'lie downs'). But I managed to pick at this in bits of being up and around and finally gone it done.


The paper is 11 x 17. I used Polychromos, Pablos, and Prismacolor colored pencils, on Fabriano Artistico Hot Press paper.

Not too much else to share. Its so #&* hot here, 100 or over for I've lost count how many days now. The cats have gone wild, insisting I keep the cat door open so they can roam around at night when it cools off. Charlie brought me a mouse, on the bed, at 3:00 am one night, which I did not appreciate. 

Sigh. Cats. Summer. Maybe I should eat this tart - its still in the fridge. 
Stay cool!

Thursday, July 24, 2014

2 Works in Progress - Berry Tart, and Jesus


Nothing finished to show today. I took reference for something that ended up being a disaster, so I had to scrap the idea (for now) until I can do a re-shoot and start again. I've also been feeling a little under the weather (partly thanks to a weird piece of fruit, and the rest is thanks to the heat, I'm sure) and haven't been as productive as I'd like. But I do have two very different things 'on the board', and thought I'd share some work in progress shots so you can see what's happening.


First up is a little berry tart. These scanned so different, when in fact the only thing that's been worked on more is the criss-cross dough on the top one. I'm saving the filling to the end, because its going to be so much fun to do - its such a gorgeous color. This is also planned to be one of my Architectural Food pieces, showing the top (this view here), side, and cross section views. If all goes according to plan. If they don't work out I can always cut them off and just have this nice round tart all by itself! So far this is all Prismacolors, on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper.





Now, onto Jesus and the children. These are the first first first sketches, sitting with plain printer paper and a black ball point pen, with a cup of coffee, out on the porch. 



Working out the girl hugging Jesus.




It seems like there would be a crippled child in the scene. And a bird.



Maybe a girl carrying her little baby brother or sister. Also thinking about hair styles. A braid? Just tied back somehow?



I love fat little baby hands, reaching.



I like the idea of one kid hugging Jesus' hand, and kind of standing on his foot. Jesus doesn't care if you stand on his foot! haha  Also drew a little Down Syndrome boy, but then wasn't sure if that was too much. I want to show all kinds of kids, so that kids looking at the illustration will be able to relate.



A girl carrying her lamb. Or maybe he's a boy. Have to make sure the sandals don't look like flip flops!



This one looks like he's anointing someone. Need to work out what that arm's doing. Not sure if I want it to just be 'down', or like he's saying "hey, Jesus!".



Just walking. Getting the feet just right, especially from the back, is tricky.


A little boy and his . . . sister? Not sure how many of these kids will be in this illustration, but the one's that don't make it in will show up in another piece, somewhere, eventually.



Its fun to just imagine a scene like this, and what it was really like. 


So that's what I'm up to. Hopefully next time I'll have a little more to share. Hope its cool where you are!



Tuesday, July 08, 2014

Stars & Stripes


(click the image to see it larger)


I'm really happy with how these little guys turned out. They were super fun to draw, and I loved using my Prismacolors again for a whole, entire illustration. (Thank you Bostitch Super Pro 6 pencil sharpener for making that possible!)


This guy is very proud to be first in line in the procession, and has been practicing his fife music a lot, making sure he was ready for today.




This guy lost his nice tricorn hat in a horse-and-wagon mishap just before he had to step into line here, but is trying to put on a brave face, and is very proud that he gets to be the one carrying the flag.




And this guy has been driving his family nuts, practicing the drums, but they all know its worth it when they see him marching and drumming so well with his friends.




I did this whole thing with colored pencils. And I managed to keep it pretty clean. But even so, it needed a little tweak with Photoshop at the end to look even better. So I thought I'd show you a little 'behind the scenes' look at how things magically get cleaned up before going to print. 


This is how it looked straight from the scanner. Its a little 'dirty', and the scanner made a dark edge on the left. Its also a little crooked.



Then here it is cleaned up, and straightened out.




Here's a close up showing one little piece, with the background as it was, then cleaned up.


Can you see how grey the background looks on the left, and all the little 'bits of stuff'? That's the paper texture, and little flecks of pencil that, no matter how careful you are, deposit themselves on the paper and refuse to come off. So, with the help of the eraser tool in Photoshop, I painstakingly go around each figure and erase all of that out, leaving a nice clean background.

I also use the clone tool to carefully pick out any little stray flecks of something that may land on the actual image (here, there was a tiny grain of dark color on his nose). 



When I'm working on a piece that I know is going to be printed, and make a little goof or stray mark, I find myself going "That's OK, I'll fix it with Photoshop", and keep going. But when you're doing something where the original art is IT, like a commissioned piece, you have to be really really careful, because there is no room for mistakes, and there is no fixing the final art with Photoshop! The piece has to be perfect (no pressure). 


Thursday, July 03, 2014

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!