Drawing a Fine Line

2012-01-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-15T10:43:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-17T19:05:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-03T16:46:00.001-08:00

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

2011-11-18T14:39:00.001-08:00

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

2011-11-06T13:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-24T11:09:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

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.
:~)

~~~~~~~

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

House Portraits

2011-10-03T13:09:00.000-07:00

a residence in San Francisco, 2011 © Paula Pertile

(click to see this larger)

One of the hats I wear that I don't advertise much is "architectural renderer".

I used to do a lot of this, some for private clients and some for print, for quite a while. The print clients have sadly largely gone the way of the dodo, thanks to the economy and the end of budgets for hand done art in favor of clip art or photography, or the demise of the publications all together.

So I've decided to dust off my portfolio a bit and start offering my skills to anyone who might need or want a rendering done of their home or business.

This was done with black colored pencils. You see a lot of black and white building 'portraits' done with pen and ink, which I also do, (and love), but I thought something in black pencil would be a nice change. Its a softer look.

I used my handy dandy black pencil swatch chart I did a while back to choose a range of blacks that would make greyer or blacker blacks - much like how you would use different grades of graphite pencils to control the values in a graphite drawing. For this one I used Polychromo and Coloursoft blacks, and a variety of textures and marks to make the picture.

I'll be adding more black and white samples, as well as some in color, to my etsy shop in the coming days. These make nice Christmas presents, and now is the time to start thinking about commissioning something like this! If you're interested, please email me.

** I've added this sample as a Custom 8 x 10 House or Building Portrait to my etsy shop, here.

Seed Pod 1

2011-09-24T13:56:00.000-07:00

Seed Pod 1

Its Fall, a season of new beginnings.

I've been itching to do some new work, but not sure what. I decided to sit at my board and just start doodling. I started sketching a kind of pea pod, and thought "I don't want to draw peas, why am I drawing a pea pod?" But I finally gave in to it, sketched out a pod shape on a piece of Stonehenge and started coloring.

As I got into it, I realized the symbolism of a seed pod - its a dried or drying-up husk, and contains the seeds of new life. Creativity, new life, new work, new ideas, straining to come forth. How perfect an image is that?

This piece is 5 x 7. I started with Coloursofts, then switched to Lyra Rembrandt Polycolors and Polychromos. There are a lot of layers of pencil on this. A lot.

I loved just making this up out of my head. I'm kind of tired of taking reference photos and trying to slavishly copy things. Don't get me wrong - I love realistic art (obviously). And I love drawings of food or botanical subjects drawn from life. I'm just saying it was refreshing to invent something for a change.

I called it Seed Pod 1 because I have a feeling this may be a series.

I'm not sure where this will lead, but I'm hoping that whatever I've tapped into here will yield some good things all across the board (pun intended) - this 'fine art' side as well as the illustrator side of myself.

9/11, 10 years later

2011-09-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago on 9/11 I was in my flat in San Francisco, drinking coffee and reading the Chronicle, oblivious to what was happening until my mom called to say "isn't it awful?" and I had no idea what she was talking about. Then of course I was glued to the television (with no cable back then) for it seemed like days. I'd been to New York a couple of times, but never the World Trade Center. By the time I tuned in, the first tower had already fallen. It was just surreal.

A couple of months later I did a piece of art for the Wall Street Journal about how Christmas was going to 'feel' that year. Sadly, the jpg I have of the art is now corrupted, and the original art is buried in some flat file. It was black and white, and showed some Christmasy icons (nutcracker, Santa, etc.) looking rather somber.

The horse above is an SFPD horse that was 'parked' out in front of my house one day while his rider was having a coffee or something nearby. Its the closest I have to anything sort of 'tribute-like', and even though its an SF horse and not a NY one, we'll use our imaginations. The fact that its riderless seems fitting.

I remember vividly that on the night before (the 10th) I was supposed to go to dinner with my neighbors, but they forgot, and I was annoyed with them. They apologized and said they'd had something unexpected happen, and we re-scheduled for two nights later. And I remember calling them that night to say that I didn't think it was a very good night to go out. I just couldn't imagine eating pizza and drinking wine (we were going to go to Gaspare's, out local pizza joint), it seemed wrong. We never did go.

Most of what I remember though is just being in shock, and also feeling very helpless being so far away. A lot of people felt that way. Everyone was just kind of going about their business in a sort of daze. People were buying flags like crazy, hanging them in windows, flying them from car antennae, plastering them onto anything and everything.

I didn't know anyone personally who lost their life that day. My piano tuner at the time had a friend who saw someone jump from the towers and said he wasn't right in the head anymore, that he just couldn't process it, it was too much. I can imagine how many others there are who have similar stories.

My heart goes out to all who lost their lives that day, and all those who lost someone they loved.

cat disguises & new pencils

2011-09-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

Last week's Illustration Friday prompt was "Disguise", but I was working on other 'work' things and didn't manage to get this done until now. So here it is.

Every cat needs a few good disguises, am I right?

Here our Cat is looking very 'up to something' after studying his trusty Cat Disguises book.

"International Spy" is a classic disguise. Its good for evading people as well as dogs, and can get a cat into places he might not otherwise have access to, or out of a tight spot.

"Nice little old lady who feeds the birds" is also a must have disguise. Dressed like this, sitting on a park bench, throwing out birdseed - well, you can imagine.

There will be more. I'm thinking paper dolls. Yes? Stay tuned.

I did these with my new Soho colored pencils. I like them! I would put them somewhere between Prismacolors and Luminance in "feel". Probably a lot closer to Luminance. They're a little fatter than some other brands, and have a faceted barrel (not round). They held up very well in my sharpener (my Prismacolors have been breaking like crazy - not sure if its them, or the sharpener - an Xacto School Pro). So I was happy about that.
I didn't use all the colors, but liked what I did use.
Here's an article about them.
I do have the set of 72, so even though the article says they're not available yet, they are.

I'm so happy that its September! Fall always feels like the beginning of a new year to me. I'm looking forward to sweaters and crisp leaves and soups and woolies and all that good stuff. And Halloween candy. Its in the stores already!! I've been good. So far.

Back to the drawing board ...

School days

2011-08-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

This time of year always makes me nostalgic for the good old days, when we had to walk to school, and carry all our books in our arms (because backpacks hadn't been invented yet), and dinosaurs roamed the earth.

These are some of my old school supplies who've survived decades in various drawers and bins. I can't help wondering what remains of some 3rd grade math problem or 7th grade spelling assignment are still clinging to these.

The acquisition of that art gum eraser signified my upgrade to being a 'real artist'.
I know I also had colored pencils like that last "peely" eraser. Does anyone else remember those?

** These are now all for sale in my etsy shop - both the originals, and prints. They're all ACEO size 2.5 x 3.5 inches.

Sluggish

2011-08-08T17:12:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to Fall.

Illustration Friday - Obsession

2011-08-01T11:18:00.000-07:00

** Update **

Because I truly am obsessive, I worked on the alphabet some more. I just wasn't satisfied with it. It wasn't there yet.
And now I think it is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is ~

You know I had to draw the whole alphabet after I did that other "PAULA DREW THIS" piece the other day.

I did these more "illustrative" than the other ones, which were more realistic. More of an idealized version, rather than individual cracker portraits.

I've had a lot of obsessions in my day. Shoes (more specifically, black boots), white pitchers (which I still have), a boy or two here and there, finding the perfect club sandwich (Westlake Joe's does a pretty good one), cheap Chinese from the hole-in-the-wall places on Clement, hoity toity real estate, and now, its seems, a lot of square things.

I wonder what's next?

Beginnings

2011-07-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

I love seeing other people's sketches for things, so thought I'd share some of mine.

These are the very first, first, first, rough, rough, rough idea sketches for a new project.

I love when its almost like you're doing 'automatic drawing' - you know, like automatic writing (not that I've ever done that) where you just let whatever wants to come out, come out.

How to stage things -

Sometimes you see things in your head one way, then have to fiddle with it a bit to make it better.

Here I first "saw it" as the kitty looking in the cupboard from a 'straight on' back view with him standing on a little wooden stool, then decided a slight angle and a step stool were more interesting.

Here they're doing things to pass the time ~

The main task at hand ~

This is actually the first scene ~

Better not say too much more or I'll give it all away!

These obviously have a long way to go, but getting the first idea and gesture and staging is huge.

After that, the refining and finishing is a lot of work too, but I'm always relived to at least know what I'm going to draw.

Paula Drew This

2011-07-20T20:30:00.000-07:00

Did you guess? Thanks to everyone who 'played' over on my Facebook page, and congrats to the winners who guessed it right (yes, there was more than one).

This was a lot of fun to do. I used more Polychromos than Luminance - the Luminance put down the first layers, then the Polys came in and did all the fussy work. Working on cream paper instead of white made sense for this. I don't know why I always automatically default to white or natural paper (maybe because I bought some big pads of it and its just 'there', ready to go.)

Actually, I have a little pad of 5 x 7 Stonehenge which has a handful of colors, and that's where this came from. I also have a pad of 8 x 8 square (which I completely forgot about - I love when I unearth art supply treasures like that!).

When I first opened this box of crackers and decided what to draw, I then had to fish around to find all the letters. There were lots and lots and lots of 'E's and 'A's and other common letters, but no 'W' or 'D' to be found - until I got down to the bottom of the box. Phew! I had to wonder if someone in the factory actually sits there and counts out how many of each letter go into the box.

I have some ideas for other art I'd like to do with these. If I can keep from eating them before I draw them! Ah, well, there are more where these came from.
I wish they had numbers ...

Cheesy Scrabble WIP

2011-07-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

I found these Cheez-It Scrabble Tile Crackers in the store yesterday and of course HAD to buy them to draw. Right?

They're regular Cheez-Its with letters impressed in them. I love how they're not all perfect, and some are downright funky. (They all taste good though.)

I'm doing a little "Guess What I'm Drawing" thing over on my Facebook page. If you go there and leave a 'guess' as to what this spells out, you will be eligible to win a free print! I will be giving away a free print of this when its done to the first person who guesses correctly. (And yes, this is a thinly veiled ploy to get more people to visit my page - and all new "Likes" are very welcome!)

I did this "Guess What I'm Drawing" thing with the last piece, the wasabi crackers, and someone guessed it pretty fast.

This one is 5 x 7 on Cream Stonehenge paper, done with Luminance and Polychromos.

CPSA Awards

2011-07-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

CPSA has the 19th Annual International Exhibition award winners up on their site.

Impressive, as always!

Congratulations to all the winners!!

Wasabi Nori Maki

2011-07-14T15:52:00.000-07:00

(click to see this bigger)

I'm still here. Just going in about 47 directions is all, and haven't had anything I could post about. I'm excited about some new projects I have in development and am busy working on those.

Meanwhile, I needed to do a little piece just for me. This is part of my "Snack Crackers" series (remember the square cheese and round butter and other ones I did a while back?). These are Japanese wasabi nori maki crackers, or translated, wasabi crackers with seaweed wrapped around them. They pack quite a punch! If you like wasabi (that green stuff they serve with sushi) you will like these. Seaweed is really good for you, you know. Its packed with all kind of vitamins. And the wasabi will clear up your sinuses at the very least. All in all, a nice healthy, tasty snack.

This is 5 x 7 inches on Stonehenge. I used some Luminance along with Polychromos. I've finally warmed up to the Luminance pencils (I wasn't sure about them at first). I haven't received the Soho pencils yet (from the last post). I ordered some other things with them, which are on backorder, so to get the free shipping deal I have to wait until everything is in stock. You know how that goes. So I'll give them a spin when they get here.

The CPSA convention is this weekend - can't wait to see who won what!

As I write this I'm listening to a blue jay squawk its fool head off at one of my cats out in the yard. Its been dive-bombing them, chasing them up onto the porch and through the cat door. Its a very brave bird, sitting on the porch railing, right there, just begging for one of them to pounce. My Phyllo caught a squawky black bird a couple of years ago who did the same thing. He dropped it on the kitchen floor as if to say "THERE. Took care of that!" So I'm just waiting ...

Back to the drawing board and my pencils. I have some other cool Japanese treats calling.

New brand of colored pencils

2011-07-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

There are some new colored pencils in town ~ SoHo Urban Artist Professional Colored Pencils

Here's what Jerry's Artarama's site says about them:

Professional colored pencils developed to meet the demands of artists!

In developing their new line of artists' colored pencils, SoHo Urban Artist went directly to artists themselves to find out precisely what is needed in a high quality colored pencil today. Working from near unanimous requests, SoHo created a line of colored pencils that met or exceeded artists' requirements across the board!

Using highly pigmented, vibrant colors, every shade in the 72-color line has superior light resistance for brilliant and lasting works of art. The 3.8mm leads are securely glued into the hexagonal basswood casings, so the pencils sharpen easily and do not break. The smooth, buttery consistency ensures that each stroke glides across the paper, and multiple layers are made possible by the minimal hazing of these superb colors. Each pencil is lacquered seven times to a smooth, satin black finish, and the tips are dipped in corresponding colors for quick recognition. Produced in conjunction with Cretacolor of Austria, one of the world's oldest and most respected pencil manufacturers, SoHo Professional Colored Pencils are truly an artists' color: designed to last and developed with you in mind!

If you go to the page about them at Jerry's, there's a video and a few reviews. I'm confused because the guy in the video says they're wax based, but the reviews compare them to (my beloved) Polychromos, which are oil. So which is it?
The price is right, so I'm tempted. Like I need more colored pencils.
If anyone tries these, please leave a comment and tell me what you think!

**update - I ordered a set, so we shall see.

Make your blog mobile device friendly

2011-06-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

(note - the type here is all wonky, sorry - can't get it to play nice for some reason)
I wanted to share a thing I discovered. You can set your blog to 'crop itself' (for lack of a better description) to display on mobile devices. On Blogger, go to the Settings tab and click on Email & Mobile. Click 'yes' on the mobile thing.

Here is a preview of what mine looks like formatted for a mobile device ~

(click to see it bigger)

Why is it pink? Well, the template I chose for my blog is the pink Watermark one. Then I made changes to it in the advanced design thing (taking out the pink), but they obviously don't apply to the mobile thing. So that's kind of a bummer. There's a probably a way around that, but I'm not sharp enough to know what it is. Its not that important. If someone really really wants to read my blog on their phone, they'll just have to bear with the pink background.

I also tried the special 'email to a blog' thing that's on the same page, but couldn't get it to work. Maybe its only for sending from a mobile device? and not a regular email account? I don't know. Over my head.

Fish Tacos, anyone?

2011-06-26T15:16:00.000-07:00

My Wendelito ~

(click to see him bigger)

I took a little too long on this, but I worked out some things I wanted to try. Next time I'll be able to do the same thing, faster. Its all Prismacolors and Polychromos, and a wee bit of graphite. Graphite makes a nice "grey", and sharpens up to a needle point, so can get into nooks and crannies of the paper really well. Sometimes I run a sharpened colored pencil over a sandpaper block to get it super sharp like that.

This kitty is an homage to my Wendell who I lost a while back. I'm working on a book dummy using this idea, so this will be a sample piece for that as well as a children's book promo piece. I'm posting him everywhere, so apologies in advance if you get sick to death of seeing him every time you turn around for the next few days.

And now I'm off to Taco Bell (seriously).
Adios!

More WIP

2011-06-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

Still working on this, in between other things.

I'm having a lot of fun. I added more to the turquoise wall, and am playing with using some graphite in addition to the colored pencil.

Here's a close up of the little guy on a break in the background. He's about 3 inches high.

And a senorita passing through.

The piece is about 9 x 12 inches.
Digital is fine, but this is my first love. I liked learning how to do a colored pencil "look" digitally, but have realized that nothing compares to actually handling real pencils, and doing it the real way.

Hope you're all staying cool. We've just had a couple "over 100" days and I was very cranky. I should be drawing a snow scene!

WIP

2011-06-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

This is what I'm working on.

Its just the top half. Yes, its very turquoise.
I can't believe how long it took just to do this much. Well, actually I can. Its just that every time I do something like this I question my sanity. You colored pencil people know what I mean.

I'm not satisfied with just putting down a flat layer of an aqua or turquoise color, then a plain stripe of yellow and orange. I have to add all sorts of blues and greens, and change the temperature of the colors in the zig zag stripes as well.

This is how many colors have gone into this so far. Prismacolors and Polychromos.

This has a long way to go, so I will be tucked in beneath the A/C vent, squirreling away on it for the foreseeable future. Actually, now that the heat has officially arrived, I would like to stay squirreled away until about September!

Adios ~

Getting clean

2011-06-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

No, no, not like that. I mean cleaning up art. So you can put it on backgrounds, make repeats etc. for licensing. I don't think most people have any idea how art actually gets "fiddled with on the computer" to make it ready to go on products. Its an interesting process. I'll show what I'm doing at the moment with my pajama kitties from a couple of posts back.
(*I did have a whole post showing them in a repeat, but took it down because I do want to license them, and got all paranoid about showing them around too much. I do appreciate everyone's positive comments about them, both here and on Facebook!)

So here's how it starts.
I have the kitty in red longjohns, who I've called "cat 1". He was done with colored pencils on Stonehenge paper. When I scanned him, the paper texture showed up. So I took the eraser tool in Photoshop and carefully went alllllll around, erasing up (what I thought was) close to the edge of the image to make a nice clean background.

(click images to see them bigger)

What I should have done FIRST, which I did in this next step, was use the lasso tool to cut him out of the background, then plunk him down onto a new page with an "empty" (or transparent) background. THEN, all I had to do was clean up the small space just around the edges of the figure, not the whole page. Which I then did. I enlarged the image to 300% so I could see it up close, and got in there with a pretty small brush (9 pt or less) and cleaned it all up. So now the little guy is very clean, and resting on a totally empty background. Or is he?

I made a new file and put a solid color over the whole thing, then dragged the new 'clean' kitty over on top to see how he'd look on a background. ACK! Look at all that white around him! This is what happens with colored pencil work, where the "edge" of an image isn't well defined. What makes colored pencil work so nice and soft looking is often a sort of gradated-out edge. But it makes it much harder to gauge where to erase, exactly, and keep the soft edge while still making it clean enough to put on a background.

This is what it looks like when you look up close. Look at all the little 'white bits' that I thought I'd cleaned up. YUK.

So now I have to tediously go around every single edge with a 3 or 5 pt eraser brush and pick at it until its clean, but still looks like colored pencil. That means I can't just do a hard swipe all around, up close, like I would if it were a different medium. Oh no - I have to do a waaaaay more fiddly "in and out" kind of erasing thing to it.

But when I'm done, I will have a perfect image with no background at all, which can be placed in a repeat on any kind of background and look great.

See? People have no idea.

If you want to learn how to clean up art like this and do repeats, check out Tara Reed's ebooks. She rocks.
~~~~~~~

Also, yes, the blog looks different. Sometimes you just need to change things.

Also, I took down my art from Fine Art America. They didn't do anything wrong- but it seemed too redundant with Imagekind, since they both do basically the same thing.

Also, CafePress has changed their policies a bit, allowing for 3rd party sales which you have no control over (if you're in the Marketplace), and they also can remove images if they haven't been used for a long time. There's a lot of discussion in the forums about it all. I took my stuff out of the Marketplace (which means people will only find it by going to my shop directly) which cuts out a lot of potential traffic and sales, but also lets me keep more control. If you have a shop and somehow didn't get the email about this, I suggest you read the new terms to decide for yourself what you want to do.

I'll have the chicken case-a-deeya please

2011-06-07T17:45:00.000-07:00

What's on the board at the moment. Its early bird special hour at the local Mexican restaurant. That is not a cinnamon roll on her head - hopefully it will look more like a tacky flower in the finish.

Lets see, what else. Working on lots of stuff, actually. All children's book and licensing things. Some I can't show, you know how it is.

The weather has finally turned to sun after a weird spell of more wintery rain. Its a welcome sight. I've been sad because I lost one of my kitties a couple of weeks ago - a little wild one, one of those you can't get tamed up, then they get sick, and ... its too sad. I'll miss the little guy coming to eat every day.

So I'm just hunkered down, drawing away. Its nice. I'll post more when I have something worth showing.

Illustration Friday - Asleep

2011-05-30T18:36:00.000-07:00

Mary Jane

2011-05-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

A little commission piece.
Polychromos and Prismacolors on Stonehenge.

How many pencils it takes ~

I always need Prisma reds and black to bump things up a bit.

I'm in the process of putting together a "Commissions" page with samples and prices and all of that. Meanwhile, if you have an idea for a piece you'd like me to do for you, please go ahead and email me. I can draw other things besides candy and crackers. :~)

Experimenting

2011-05-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

I finally received my order of Fabriano Hot Press paper and took it out for a spin. I like it, but its an adjustment from using more 'toothy' paper. It goes 'smooth' way faster - which is not a bad thing, but its definitely something to be aware of and plan for in a drawing.

This little crouton was done with Polychromos, and the bulk of it was done grinding the pigment into an already smooth surface.

I want to do a series of these little guys, and this is my practice one. I may have to change my technique a bit, or work in less layers - or something. I'll figure it out.

~~~~~~~
This week was very much about practicing and experimenting. I did a bit of that with some digital drawing as well. Last post I had a rough sketch of an illustration ~

Then I fiddled with different drawing textures and pen sizes and styles a bit with my wacom and pen.

I changed the proportions of some of the characters as well as facial expressions.

This one's a really squiggly nervous line.

I'm not sold on any of them, really, although I like the 'life' in the last one. What I do like is knowing that I can actually draw now on the computer, and have to say its pretty cool. It soooo nice to not waste umpteen sheets of tracing paper, retracing and redrawing. But now I just have to figure out a good 'finish' technique. I do know how to do my colored pencil 'look', but I think that's overkill, to be honest.

So that's where I am this week. Lots of things in the planning stages. Lots.
My first magnolia bloomed, which is awesome.
And the world didn't end today so that's a good thing.

Boys will be boys

2011-05-15T09:02:00.000-07:00

This is what's on the board. Those three brats are soooo busted, and they don't know it yet. Enjoy your moment boys, because in about two seconds you're going to turn around and face the music!

I'm deciding how to do the finish. Digital I think. But digital line and flat color? Or digital colored pencil? Line and flat color would go waaaay faster. But I do want to develop the digital colored pencil style too. Decisions, decisions.

I scanned in my original drawing (that was done on paper with a pencil - I still start that way), then reworked it with the wacom. Funny, the hardest thing was getting the horizontal lines of the tables and benches right. I used the 'line tool' in Photoshop, but each line is a separate layer, which can't be erased, so you have to flatten them down first, which is annoying. I'm sure there's a way around that, in the "all the stuff you haven't figured out in Photoshop yet" manual. Which I will get around to reading one of these days. Maybe.

Palate cleanser

2011-05-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, in between 'real' jobs, I do something like this. Its kind of like a nice lemon sorbet between the fish and meat courses. It lets the mind rest a bit from doing representational art, and is more meditative and intuitive. Its nice to still be 'coloring', but not have the pressure of having to create something specific, or be so exacting.

This is all Polychromos on Stonehenge.

I've ordered some Fabriano Artistico hot press paper which should be here any minute. I'm anxious to try it out (can't believe I never have before.) I like that it can take paint, but also seems to be a favorite for colored pencils. And it works on a light box.

And now I'm in the mood for lemon sorbet. (I doubt the ice cream truck guy has any.) Oh well.

Mom Day, and getting all networked and stuff

2011-05-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

First of all, Happy Mother's Day to all you wonderful Moms out there who let the kids eat goldfish crackers in bed while you read to them ~

My Mom has requested breaded veal cutlets for dinner, so I, with mixed feelings, bought the makings for that (I mean - veal. Who eats VEAL?) and will grudgingly / joyfully make her a special dinner (and will choke down my portion as best I can). Because I am truly grateful for her, veal requests and all.

~~~~~~~

Other stuff - I spent most of the day doing all kinds of internet networky stuff. The kind of stuff we're all supposed to be doing these days to stay connected and get work and all of that. I always feel like I'm soooo behind on all of this (because I am), but am slowly trudging along, trying to stay in the game. (I feel like when you're running a race on a track, and you think you're in step with all the runners, until you realize that even though they're running alongside of you, they're actually a whole lap ahead.)

I followed some new people on Twitter and Facebook.
I fiddled with some stuff on LinkedIn.
I listed something for sale on a daily painters' site.
I tinkered with my CafePress shop.
THEN. I found this new (to me) place called Behance (which is sort of linked to LinkedIn?)
And I made a new profile, filled in all the info about work history, etc., and uploaded some portfolios.

This view here is the frame view. So if you set up your own profile, you too can have a link to a page like this. Its a clean way to direct potential clients to your portfolios, without all the extra 'stuff' (but of course they can still get to that easily if they want to).

I've just scratched the surface here. You can upload videos, work in progress, projects, etc., and control who can see them. You can make them totally private, or have limited access, or have them be public. You can also have links to things you have for sale (like an etsy shop), which I'm going to work on next. There are also job postings which you can hunt through, and groups, and over all, it just seems like a good actual 'work' kind of place, rather than just a chit-chat kind of place. Its worth a try, anyway.

The thing about all this networking stuff is that it takes soooo much time away from actually doing new art. Doesn't it? I'm not the only one who has noticed this, am I? Do I sound old? Hope not. I just mean, (insert creaky voice here) I remember when someone would call you on an actual phone (that had a cord and was attached to a wall) about a job, then would fax you a sketch and a contract, then you had to search through your reference file (aka morgue or scrap file) for pictures to look at to draw from (or maybe the client would have to FedEx them to you, which could take days), then you had to actually draw and paint the illustration with real paint on real paper (which some people still do, me included, but back then you didn't have a choice). And oh - no one had a computer. There was no email. !!!!! I know. You had to call people and leave messages. At their phone at the office. Attached to the wall. If they were out to lunch or somewhere you couldn't reach them. You could not text them. Seriously. And you had to send actual samples of your work. There were no websites. NO. WEBSITES. I know, I can't believe it either. If you had told me then, that I would doing all of this, now, it would have sounded like science fiction. I would have laughed! And yet, here I am. With tired eyes from staring at a computer screen all day, uploading art and linking to who knows who all over the world. Crazy.

Anyway - what was I talking about? Oh yeah. There's no time to do the actual work anymore. Well, there is, but we have to be really good at time management. Or something has to give, somewhere. I'm just saying.

So here's to all the mothers who are masters at that (time management). The original multi-taskers, who can make dinner, clean the house, pay the bills, balance the checkbook, read a story, make a costume, clean up umpteen messes, "watch you" do that special thing 1,000 times and act impressed every time, wipe a tear, fix a boo-boo, help with homework, and about a million other things, all at once. You're awesome.

Thanks, Moms.

Cinco de Mayo

2011-05-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

This is something I'm working on that actually doesn't have anything at all to do with Cinco de Mayo, but its such a good fit I had to share.

Its based on my late kitty, Wendell, who loved to eat. He was black and white, and had a bobbed tail, so I'm working out how to show his pattern just right, and am also wondering if the lack of a tail (in some views) makes it hard to tell that he IS a cat. Like in this one, where his ears are hidden, I hope there's enough there to make it obvious he's a kitty. (I just realized I forgot to draw in his whiskers.)

This was my first idea sketch for this.

Something I always do is make a tight front, back and side view of a character, especially if its sort of complicated. It helps to keep proportions right when doing complicated views or perspective.

So my little Wendelito has some work to be done on him, but right now he's going to enjoy a nice plate of fish tacos and some tortillas and guacamole.

Adios!

Zucchini Mufffin

2011-04-30T15:51:00.000-07:00

All done.

(click on it to see it bigger)

This was fun. Tedious, but fun. All Polychromos on Stonehenge. No solvents. Its about 4 x 11 on a slightly larger piece of paper. So pretty much life size.

I'm not sure what to call this type of subject and style. I posted this question on Facebook the other day and got some fun suggestions! Its botanical + architectural (since it shows a top, or plan view; side or elevation; and a cross-section), + gastronomical, because its food. Right? So I was doing creative combinations like gastrobotanitectural, archibotanomical, etc. Those are a mouthful. Maybe I don't need to call it anything. But it would be fun say "Paula does these botanitectural food pieces" - or something. Suggestions welcome!!

One thing I have learned doing these is to keep the light source consistent - or else. Like, if you start the piece in natural daylight, that's how you need to complete it. When the light fades and you turn on the studio lights, WHAMO!, it looks totally different. This makes it difficult to do a marathon drawing session, or to work on a seriously overcast day, when you need to turn lights on.

The other thing to watch out for is crumbs!! Little bits fall off and can leave an oily stain if left sitting on the paper for too long, so beware, and brush often (the drawing, that is).

Another pesky thing are flies. Bleah. I had one in the studio, and although he didn't land on this, there will be other muffins and other flies. Especially as the weather warms up.

I worked on this over a couple of days, and when I stopped for the night, I carefully covered the muffin (on its little display stand - a coffee mug) with a Ziplock plastic bag. That kept critters off of it and also kept it from getting dried out.

Oh, and I did end up using green, after all. Zucchini bits are green. Green is fine in food if its actually supposed to be green. Last post I was saying how green wasn't a good color for food (mold, you know). Unless you're drawing mold on purpose. (Hmmmm, is that the seed of an idea?)

Anyway. I'll be doing more of these. But I've been neglecting my children's book side while this 'fine art side' has been having its day, so I'll be doing more of that now for a while.

not crackers or an onion

2011-04-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

This is what's on the board.

It will make more sense when I do the other 'views'.
Its colored pencil, and drawn from life. All Polychromos, on Stonehenge.

Have read all my new botanical art books and am inspired. Interesting that they all recommend Polychromos, mostly, for colored pencil work. They all give a list of recommended colors for doing plants, but of course they don't apply to doing food. Green too often equals mold in a food picture, and we can't have that. Also, Ann Swan does a lot of shading with greys to build up the values, and there again, I don't feel grey is a good choice for food. So am rewriting the book, so to speak, for doing food.

Oh - this is a zucchini muffin, in case you were wondering. And there are a good 10 colors or so in there so far. Can't do too much more to it, but knowing me, I'll try to fiddle some. I picked a challenge, for sure.

Old Onion

2011-04-25T17:30:00.000-07:00

This poor onion was sitting in a tureen on the kitchen counter along with others, waiting to be diced into a spaghetti sauce or maybe something a little more exciting. While its friends were content to keep waiting, this one gave it up and started to 'go funny'.

What fascinates me is how part of it is dying, while at the same time its shooting new life out of its head.

And so I had to draw it.

This was done with Polychromos and graphite, on illustration board. Its about 6 x 8 inches.

An interesting challenge was to get it drawn before it changed too much! This puppy GREW right before my eyes, I swear. I'd work on it, then go do something else for a few hours, and come back to find it had morphed into a slightly different creature. Just enough to make me wonder if it was just me. (Like, back in school, when we had an unsuccessful figure drawing, we'd say "but the model moved!") The same was true here - but it really did move!

Using graphite to do the 'peels' seemed like a good choice. I didn't feel like rendering them, and also felt like they'd detract from the rest of the piece. The 'story' was in the onion itself and the shoots.

And I had to get a 'square' in there somewhere. That's my 'thing' now I guess. I love square shapes. So if the art itself isn't square, there will be something square in it. You heard it here first.

Easter

2011-04-21T18:31:00.001-07:00

Here are two wildly different Eastery images to at least acknowledge the holiday. Neither is new, but its the best I can do.

This was a card for NobleWorks a while back. I actually re-purposed the image from another larger illustration I did, adding the grass and a few other Eastery touches.

And this mango just looked like an Easter egg to me, so I kept going with the colors and took it all the way.
Its colored pencil on illustration board.

I boiled eggs today and am starting to put my baskets together.

Hope you all have a nice holiday (if you celebrate it). Otherwise, have a happy weekend!

2011-04-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

Working on a commission I'm not at liberty to show, so meanwhile, I'll show you other stuff ~

I received my order of botanical art books - whee! Can't WAIT to sit with these and gorge myself on the beautiful art within.

I have some framed art that I'm a) trying to photograph properly to sell and b) trying to decide whether to redo the backing on or not. These are framed prints that were selling in a shop here (which has closed), and the backs are not sealed up with paper, ala gallery framing. They were purposely done that way, since people sometimes wanted to switch out a print to put it in a different frame. I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade that, or leave them as is, before putting them up in the etsy shop. "As is" would fetch a lower price, so methinks that might be the safest way to go. Still mulling.

I also joined and uploaded some art to Fine Art America. I love the stretched canvas option they have.

Have also been fiddling with my online shops and am updating my whole shopping page, so lots of 'behind the scenes' stuff going on. I did list the originals of the cracker drawings for sale (unframed) if you're interested. The frames I had ordered that I thought would be perfect for them, aren't (grrrrr...), so they're going solo.

And for now, its back to the drawing board for me ~

Cinnamon Graham

2011-04-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

Another one finished. All Prismas, 8 x 8 inches.

These are the 4 in the series that look best together I think.

I'm going to do some prints, and will frame the originals.

I just picked up some framed art and prints and cards that I had in a shop here that has, sadly, closed. Another victim of the bad economy. Sigh. So I may put them up in my etsy shop. Some have fancy frames, ooh la la. I will share pics when I do.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying Spring, and all that's blooming in my yard - jasmine, lilacs, irises, azaleas, daisies and roses. Ahhhhhh.

Cheese and Graham

2011-04-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

The cheese cracker is finished ~

and a graham cracker is in progress.

I'm purposely using generic brands of crackers for these. So the cheese cracker isn't a Cheez-It, the round butter cracker is not a Ritz, etc. I'm keeping my options open in case I ever have the opportunity to draw something for one of the major brands.

These generic cinnamon grahams have a slightly different 'finish' than the ones I'm used to, and although they have a 'break' scored down the middle, they don't break nicely (I had to break several, and then of course eat them, before I figured out I wasn't going to get a nice clean edge.) So I just went with it, and did one broken.

I'm exited about an idea I have of doing larger pieces, sort of botanical and sort of architectural, combined. I've had it incubating for a while, and think its time I just started. I've just ordered some botanical illustration books - by Ann Swan, Wendy Hollender and Rosie Martin. (I intended to just order the Ann Swan book, then Amazon had a "frequently bought together" link with the others, so I got them all, and got free shipping as well!) So can't wait to get those.

Meanwhile, back to the graham cracker ...

Tip for working on thick board, and more crackers

2011-04-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a little something I like to do when working on thick paper or board - in this case, really really thick (not sure what the ply is - 10?) illustration board ~

I take a piece of the same illustration board I'm doing the art on, and make a window the size (plus a hair) of what I'm working on. In this case, the window is 8 x 8, plus a little bit, just so its not super tight. This way, I can rest my hand on the surrounding surface comfortably, and don't have that annoying 'edge' always getting in the way. I HATE THAT. It doesn't take much to annoy me, so anything I can do to make things nicer, the better.

This system also keeps one from having to hold the edge of the board, and is nifty when one wants to color all the way to the edges. With these, even though the illustration board is white, I'm still doing a layer of white Polychromo on the background to give it the same texture as the rest of the piece. Fussy, I know.

This is a cheese cracker, in progress.

And here below is a finished toasted sesame cracker (you may have already seen it, since I put it on Facebook the other day.)

The frames arrived today. Why, when they say "whitewashed", are they not actually whitewashed? I suppose that description is open to interpretation. The picture on the website looked 'whiter'. Ah, well. I'll frame up a couple and see how they look. Maybe they'll be fine.

2 Saltines and a Buttery Round

2011-04-09T16:19:00.000-07:00

I've finished the first of the crackers.

Last time I posted a wip of this, which had the start of a background color. Once I did that, I couldn't change my mind. I continued on, and the darker I got with the background, the more color I had to put into the cracker itself. I took it as far as I wanted to, then started over on a fresh one, with no background. I decided I liked the really subtle colors in the cracker, and that a plain white background worked better. So this is the "tarted up" version, and the second one is her plainer sister.

Then I moved onto a "round butter cracker" (a generic version of a Ritz).

I'm purposely having them 'float', rather than have them resting on something, with a shadow. I like the formal portrait presentation of things. These are 8 x 8 inches (the image is actually more like 6 inches, floating in an 8 x 8 space, to allow for framing overlap).

I will do a graham, an oyster, and I have an assortment of fancier ones to choose from. Maybe I'll do a rye crisp too. The possibilities are endless. I may move on to cookies or English biscuits. Whichever way I go, I'll be into this for a while.

Haven't received the frames I ordered yet - anxious to see how these look framed. Its another reason I went with the white backgrounds - the frames are white washed, and I imagined these looking good in a pale frame, as a set. We'll see.

WIP- colored pencil, cracker

2011-04-03T12:50:00.000-07:00

I'm starting a new little series of colored pencil pieces. Crackers. This is a humble Saltine.

These will all be 8 x 8 inches. So far its Prismacolors, and is on Strathmore archival illustration board.

I said a while back that I wanted to do a "Pantry" series. And I think this may be how I do it. Cataloging, one thing at a time, things that might be in a pantry. For now, anyway. I may get more ambitious with it later.

I love the square format, and love doing single objects in a straight forward kind of way. I also like the architectural qualities of crackers, with their evenly space little holes and perforated edges. They're obviously stamped out by a machine to all be alike, yet they're not. They're all individuals and have imperfections. The salt crystals are different on each one as well.

I just ordered some square frames, and am hoping they will work with these new pieces. They are white-washed, so I wanted to do some art that would work, colorwise, with those. And I thought they'd be good pieces to have hanging in a kitchen.

So that's it for now. I'm planning to do at least 4 of these, and will have to decide whether to offer them individually, or as a set. But first things first - finishing the first one!

So that's it for now. Back to the board.

Digital Colored Pencil

2011-03-30T14:59:00.000-07:00

For a long time now I've been lamenting about how long my colored pencil work takes to do, and how its not always practical for my commercial illustration work, especially children's books. I love love love how it looks, and love doing it, but it just takes too darned long. Also, as the demand for digital work keeps increasing, I've been feeling kind of stuck and depressed, thinking that the 'look' and technique I had developed was fast becoming obsolete. What's a colored pencil artist to do? I wondered.

Then I found Will Terry's Digital Painting in Photoshop course, and I had a Eureka! moment. I highly highly recommend getting this if you think you might want to learn how to paint digitally. He shows his process for painting digitally with texture, which I adapted to make a 'colored pencil look'.

Here's my first practice painting, an attempt at replicating the illustration below it, which is all colored pencil.

above -digital

below - real colored pencils

Its not too bad a start, for a first try. I didn't take it 'all the way', since I don't want to keep repainting an old piece forever, but did enough to feel comfortable knowing this is actually possible, and to have something to show you.

The first thing I did after I figured out how to make the texture I wanted was a sort of gray scale, to practice controlling values ~

Painting digitally like this is so much like doing it by hand - you work in layers, building up the color, just like you would with actual pencils. Its still not fast, but its also not as slow as 'real' pencils. Also, you can try a new color, change your mind, erase, etc. without a lot of fuss. This is key when doing illustration work - often changes need to be made, like "can you make the boys shirt blue instead of green" or "please add one more child on the left side" or "change that hairstyle" or whatever. Working digitally, those changes are soooooooooooo much easier.

Here's how that little snippet of illustration looks, broken down into layers (and you can see I painted some of the 'raspberry' layer on the 'blueberry' layer, but that's OK). So let's say I decided to turn the blueberries into kumquats or something, or wanted to change the background color - I could just delete that layer and make a new one, or erase and make changes, without affecting the rest of the illustration. Like magic!

When you're finished you flatten the whole thing down into one piece, and voila! you have a finished piece.

So I'm pretty excited about this! And now just have to put together a whole new portfolio of digital colored pencil pieces to show around. That's all. :~)

(And of course I'm still going to do 'real' colored pencil work. That will be the "fine art" side of me, for commissions and pieces people want to hang on their walls. This new digital look is just for print work.)

Illustration Friday - "Toy"

2011-03-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

This is one of my kitties' toys. Funny, we buy them things we think they'd like, and I often wonder what they'd pick out for themselves if given the option.

This was done with colored pencils on illustration board.

Speaking of colored pencils ~ I'm not entering CPSA this year (the deadline is the 31st). I've been spending a lot of time doing things other than straight colored pencil work this past year, and don't have anything 'show worthy'. There's always next year, right? Good luck to all of you who do enter!

Chocolate Figs

2011-03-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

Gosh, it feels like forever since I've posted anything. I've been busy, and have several things on the board in "various states of undress", if you will. So I'll post more eventually. But for now, just finished up this one ~

(click to see it bigger)

I had lots of fun with this. I combined loose watercolor with digital. Still trying new ideas, trying to find my 'digital style'.

First I painted all the illustrations with watercolor pencils on a sheet of Arches. Then those got scanned in and placed on the page, and I did some linework with Photoshop. Next came the type. I really really tried to stay loose (except for the printed type, but even that is 'casual') as a counterpoint to my usual 'so tight I squeak' pure colored pencil work.

Here's how the naked watercolored fig looked before it got scanned and fiddled with digitally.

I really enjoyed sitting at the dining room table (not the drawing board) with my cup of coffee and a kitty laying on a blanket under the lamp on a rainy afternoon, painting like this (the watercolor part, I mean). It was lovely to get away from the formal drawing table set up and feel a little freer. Sometimes when one is at the board one can feel, dare I say it, chained. Am I right? Not always, just sometimes. Its good to change things up now and then. I'm finding that a combination of time at the board, the computer, and somewhere else (usually kitchen or dining room table) makes for a much more enjoyable illustrating experience! That's not rocket science, but I'm just saying.

So anyway. That's the fig recipe.

Then there's this guy ~

He embodies a spirit I would like to embrace in my work. I think there will be a lot more of this guy and his kinfolk coming from my pencil in days to come.

Happy Spring everybody!

More funny old art

2011-03-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

I've been working on some art I'm not at liberty to share, so thought I'd amuse you with some art I found in my files from a while back.

This one was a greeting card. I put people I knew at the time in the picture, heh heh.

This sweater is based on a real one that my mother handed down to me.

Another birthday card. The tagline was "Don't be scared ... its just another birthday!" And again, there are people in here I knew.

Boy, I've had some funny looking friends!

Illustration Friday - "Swarm"

2011-02-25T14:55:00.000-08:00

I might be pushing it just a bit, but hey, its BEES, and they SWARM, right? This is close enough. They're swarming at the office. Yeah, that's it.

I'm thinking of resurrecting this style, with an update.

It was so much fun to do.

Not sure why I stopped.

You know how it is - you get an assignment where the client wants to you to tweak things in a certain direction. So you do, and several portfolio samples later you've tweaked yourself into a whole new style.

It happens gradually, so at first you don't notice.

I mean, how did I go from this, to doing tight renderings of food with colored pencils?

I think I'm going to throw all my styles into a big pot, give it a stir, and see what happens.

After all, making art is a lot like cooking, right? You have a recipe (assignment), ingredients (characters, 'things' you have to draw), utensils (pencils, digital brushes, etc.), and then you. Your unique talent is what makes the recipe (art) successful, or not.

So I am off to go putter in the art kitchen to see what I come up with.

Drawing with Painter

2011-02-23T20:27:00.000-08:00

The last couple of posts I was trying to PAINT with a DRAWING implement.
Now here I am trying to DRAW with a PAINTing program.

What can I say.

I'm determined to 'go digital' if it kills me (but hoping it doesn't). At least for some of my children's book work. It just makes sense.

I did this drawing, at first thinking I would render it up with watercolors, or maybe colored pencils, or maybe my new BFF art supplies, the water soluble pencils. Then I thought "hey, let's give Painter a try again - its been a while."

So I opened up my original drawing and started to make a digital 'final' drawing over it on a new layer. But it wasn't that easy. I had to find a medium that mimicked my drawing style. Which actually, I couldn't. I tried everything: conte crayons, colored pencils, regular pencils, brushes, ink, watercolor, regular pencil, etc. etc., in different widths and every variation there is. Almost. What I really want is something that can do a thick and thin line, like the plain brush tool in Photoshop can. I love that. But can't seem to find the equivalent in Painter. (If you know of something, please tell me.)

I finally settled on a plain colored pencil. It sort of does thick and thin (which varies according to how much pressure you use when you draw), but also goes lighter and darker which kind of bugs me. But I tried to make it work.

The other thing I haven't figured out yet is an equivalent to Photoshop's "line tool". I would love to pull a straight line for the skate blades, for example. I don't want to do all super perfect straight lines like in Illustrator. I want to keep the 'drawing' feel. But sometimes you do need a straight edge. (I actually almost put a straight edge on my Wacom to keep my hand straight at one point. How silly is that.)

So now I have to decide how to paint this puppy. I think I will keep this one version as just a line drawing. Then I'll do a new one with some digital watercolor. There's another whole can 'o worms, the watercolor options. Oy.

Painting without paint

2011-02-22T08:55:00.001-08:00

Still fiddling with these water soluble pencils. This one I did with Faber Castell Aquarelle Sticks, just picking the pigment off with a small brush and some water to make 'paint'.

They work just like the water soluble pencils, but they're much bigger. I sat there with a stick in one hand and a little brush in the other, and with the brush wetted a bit, picked color off the stick and worked it around on the paper, blending a few colors together. It started with a washier layer of yellow, then I worked in some orange and finally two reds.

It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to, but as an experiment, it worked and I learned a few things. Which was the idea.

I did come back in with some Polychromo pencils to deepen the color and get more detail. Then - and this is where it all went wrong- I decided to do more water-pencil/paint over the top of that. Well. That can make a lovely 'goo', that you then have to shmoosh around to try to make look like something other than goo. So in other words, I overworked it, and you know how fun that is to try to fix. I managed, sort of, but thankfully this was just an experiment and not a "real" illustration for an assignment.

This was done on Stonehenge paper. I think that something heartier, like illustration board, would work better with this painting technique. Illustration board is still my all time favorite surface for everything - I just wish you could see through it on a lightbox to transfer drawings!

So anyway, this is 100% colored pencil. And a little water. Kinda cool.

Fiddling with water soluble pencils

2011-02-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to change my technique a bit for my illustration work. You know I mostly use colored pencils, but one issue I have with them is the 'grainy' look, if you don't burnish them (or sit there for way too many hours doing way too many fine layers to make the white of the paper disappear). I still like the soft look of pencils, but wondered if combining them with watercolors would make a better 'look'.

Well, actually, I already KNOW that using watercolors as an under painting would work. What I don't like about using regular watercolors this way is that: 1. I have to squeeze out paint and 2. I have to squeeze out paint.

So then I had the bright idea of trying my water soluble pencils which I had decided I didn't like some time back. What I hadn't liked before was the uneven quality of the wash you get when you 'color' an area with the pencil, then brush water over it. Yuk. I thought maybe if I did a more drybrush technique I could get more control.

* The drybrush technique is where you hold the pencil in one hand, and take a fine brush, dip it in water, roll it over a paper towel to get most of the water off, then pull it across the pencil lead to pick up some pigment - then paint with it that way. No mess! No paint trays, no puddles of water, no ''too much paint" squeezed out. Neat and tidy.

(OK, OK, I know I could use watercolors in a dry brush way too - get pan ones, or just nick a bit of paint from the opening of the tube without actually squeezing any out, etc. etc. But this is about using all pencils, no paint at all.)

First up though, here is a the swatch chart I made to see just how different the pencils are when wetted than they are dry. WOW. Big difference!! These are Faber Castell water soluble pencils, the set of 72.
I made a right mess of a few of them, and the technique is spotty since I've never done this dry brush thing before, but you get the idea.

(click to see it bigger)

I did a few experiments with different techniques. I'm working on some illustrations that have knitting in them (big surprise) and before I get to the finishes I want to nail down how I'm going to paint them. So instead of doing some generic shape like a cube, I decided to do a mitten.

All of these are on Stonehenge paper, which I want to make work because I like the 'see through on a light box' aspect of it.

On this first one I did a rather loose and still somewhat painterly dry brush technique using just one color - the Oriental Blue pencil. Looks pretty much like watercolor. But it didn't buckle the paper.

Next up, I used only pencil. The water soluble pencils, on their own, when used just like a normal pencil (no water) don't do it for me, so I switched to a Peacock Blue Prismacolor.

Here you see the old grainy soft quality, with the white paper peeking through. No burnishing, obviously.

On this one, I did a picky dry brush wash with the Oriental Blue pencil and water, then went over it with the Peacock Blue Prismacolor. I didn't develop it completely, but can see that the layer of paint underneath really cuts out the white paper nicely. And does it with watered pencil, rather than actual watercolor, which is what I wanted to find out.

Then this one is just the Oriental Blue pencil and the dry brush technique, but done in a slower and pickier way.

I'm happy to know that the pencils used with water in this dry brush method can achieve results that either look just like watercolor, or can work as an under layer to regular colored pencil.

I'm looking forward to developing this technique better - these examples are pretty rough, I must say.

The other thought I have about this is that when "100% colored pencil" is a requirement for a piece, like, say, CPSA, I believe they would have to accept water soluble pencils as being 100% colored pencil - right? I find it intriguing that one could conceivably enter a piece that looks like watercolor to a colored pencil show. Just saying. I guess its no different than using solvents or the Icarus Board or something. Still, it feels like cheating somehow.

Discuss, leave comments ~

Illustration Friday - "Sweater"

2011-02-11T13:54:00.000-08:00

I've illustrated a fair number of sweaters in my day, but these are some of my favorites - especially the gal in green.

(click to see them a bit bigger)

These were done with Polychromo colored pencils on illustration board. They're the front and back view of the same scene - get it? Actually there's one tragic flaw in it that I didn't realize until it was all done. I know I shouldn't point that out, but in case anyone sees it, I want you to know that I'm aware, thank you very much.

I've been fiddling with some water soluble colored pencils, so will post about that in a few days. I'm in a "trying to figure out THE perfect medium/technique" sort of quest, the best of all worlds, and the water pencils are my newest 'thing'. Actually I've had this set of Faber Castells forever, and had decided I didn't like them for some reason way back whenever, so banished them to the bottom of the colored pencil pile. With the Inktense. And Graphitints. But I fished them out and think now that they might hold some promise. I'll let you know ...

miscellany: colored pencils, children's books

2011-02-08T09:59:00.000-08:00

The CPSA Explore This!7 entries and winners are now online, here.

And the prospectus for the next International Exhibition is here. The deadline is March 31st! Not sure if I will enter this year, but we'll see.

~~~~~~

I just got myself caught up on what happened at the SCBWI Winter Conference, here, on the Official conference blog.
Fun reading!

~~~~~~~

That's all for today. I have to go brave the WIND and get the car smog checked. Life is fun.

Illustration Friday - "Reverse"

2011-02-06T09:59:00.000-08:00

"Looking back" is the same as going in Reverse, right? Well, close enough.

(click to see it a little bigger)

I'm looking in Reverse at some art I did a while back. This was for Highlights. Its also sort of my lame nod to the party atmosphere in the air here in the US today for the Superbowl, which I have absolutely no molecules of enthusiasm for whatsoever. I don't even know who's playing. (Should I not admit that?) I do love the commercials, but will probably watch them all on YouTube tomorrow.

Anyways. This was a Hidden Picture. I can't offhand remember what the hidden objects were, but looking at this I can spot: bowling pin, saw, horseshoe, closed book, rowboat, bone, camera (it has a little strap hanging off of it), and there should be one more, since there are usually 8 things, but can I find it? No. All you Hidden Picture veterans have a good look and tell me if you see anything else, will ya?

This was done in ink and watercolor, and I'm thinking this would be a good piece to practice on to try and do digitally. Maybe with Painter? I'm still determined to get a digital portfolio of children's book pieces together, in a simple style.

But meanwhile, WHAT IS THE 8TH HIDDEN THING?

** Update - I found it! Its a tomato. See the image below for all the 'erased out' objects.

Thanks for playing!

Chinese New Year

2011-02-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

Gung Hay Fat Choy! or Kung Hei Fat Choy! depending on how you want to spell it, English-style. Sorry I don't know the actual Chinese characters to use. Even then, it depends on what dialect you're speaking. I think what I've done is Cantonese, in English.

Its the year of the Rabbit. I know that Carrot Cake is not a traditional Chinese dish, but at least my heart is in the right place. Eat something yummy and think about good fortune and health and all of that, right?

So happy Year of the Rabbit everyone! Let's hope it is a happy year. The last one - not so much.

Some things change, some don't

2011-01-31T12:34:00.000-08:00

I ran across this piece I did from a while back, and had a good laugh.

(click on it to see it bigger)

Check out the guy's cell phone. It has an antennae.

But of course the bratty kid with the 'over it' Mom is something that will never change.

Bored people in line waiting to use the copier. Yep.

An annoying old lady poking the guy ahead of her - why? To go faster? To ask a question?

A creepy clown guy and the girl next to him, trying to keep her distance.

What I think is fun is that you could dress these people in old-timey clothes and put them in an old-timey setting, or do them all up "futuristic", and the people themselves would still be the same.

Gouache, with colored pencils

2011-01-28T15:05:00.000-08:00

I decided to put this on ebay.
CLICK HERE TO BID

tube of gouache, 5 x 7, Luminance on board

I'm still trying to fall in love with the Luminance pencils. I'm getting there. I used a wee bit of Cassel Earth on this and found it to be dry and that irritated me, but the other colors were fine. Mostly this is white and buff and a few blues and greys and violets.

I just plunked the tube of paint down on a wadded up paper towel, so it ended up being a 'white on white' composition. Then I picked out a scrap of olive greenish matt board, so I could practice doing light on dark. I used to do this well with pastels, but colored pencils behave differently. I've always liked olive for a background color. Its a good neutral - or at least, it works for me.

I'm getting tired of doing photo-real stuff. I still like it, I'm just tired of doing it. This is more satisfying to me right now. I like to draw like I have a brush in my hand - except that its a pencil. Does that make sense?

OK, that's all for now. Carry on.

New tricks

2011-01-26T12:48:00.000-08:00

(I left out the 'old dog' part of that)

OK. This whole digital apps and ebooks thing is taking off like wildfire! And for an illustrator it could be a very creatively exciting (definitely) and financially lucrative (hopefully) thing. There are new blogs and sites that are all about how to do this popping up every day. Its the future. Its here NOW!

This is not my art. It was done by Stacey Williams-Ng for her book Astrojammies, available as an interactive picturebook for the ipad.

Demibooks is the company responsible for working with her to develop the book. Go here to see a step-by-step of how this book was created. Exciting stuff!

I want to do this. Oh, I still want to make nice art for people's walls too, but this just looks like so much fun, doesn't it?

Ciabatta

2011-01-22T17:12:00.000-08:00

I said I was going to do a "pantry" series, and although I haven't quite settled on what that's going to be yet exactly, I figured I'd start warming up with some 'bread' pieces. I don't know if this piece is officially a part of the bread series or not, but I had to dive in somewhere.
I've been kind of under the weather, so this was done with a bit of a headache and not my usual energy.

This is a sweet onion ciabatta roll. What a thing to choose to draw when not full speed. Its like a little square pillow with tons of texture and little bits of onion poking through here and there.

"Sweet Onion Ciabatta Roll" 6 x 6 inches on LeCarte sanded paper

I decided to give the new Luminance pencils a spin and see what they can do. And have to say that now I like them much better than I did when I first uncorked them. This piece was done on LeCarte sanded paper, so the 'scratchy' issue I had with the Luminance before was a moot point here. If they were being scratchy, I didn't notice.

I didn't know how I wanted to approach this piece: whether to do a tight fussy rendering, or a more impressionistic thing with it. (Actually, my first idea was to do watercolors, but I didn't have the energy to mix paint today, so defaulted to the pencils.)

It started one way, then kind of gradually worked its way into a very 'from the gut', non analytical kind of drawing. I just grabbed pencils like I do when I'm doing a pastel drawing, picking intuitively, and not by looking at the swatch chart and making intelligent 'thinky' color choices.

Even though the roll is 'bread colors', I of course saw a lot more in there and that gave me an excuse to use every color in the box. The Luminance have some neat colors, Violet Grey and Olive Brown being two of my favorites so far.

But I have to say I did notice a lack of just nice 'browns'. If you're going to do something landscapey with them, or chocolate, I wouldn't think they'd be a good choice. Just saying.

Otherwise, they've redeemed themselves.

A Milk Tale

2011-01-20T10:58:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time there was a cat named Willow who liked Milk.

His owner bought Milk in the Half Gallon, and he drank many saucers full every day. Many. Many many many. Every day.

One day his owner decided to buy a Quart container instead, since the Half Gallon was juuuust a wee bit too much Milk to get through. And when she poured the new Milk into the saucer, Willow wouldn't drink it. It just sat there.

The owner drank the Milk and found it to be fresh and good, so thought maybe Willow wasn't feeling well. She went out and bought a fresh Quart just to be sure, but he wouldn't drink that either. So she decided to do a little test. She poured it into the rinsed out (with just fresh water, no soap) empty Half Gallon container (and didn't let Willow see her do it). And then proceeded to pour the new Quart, disguised as a Half Gallon, into the saucer. But Willow still wouldn't drink it! He knew it was from the evil Quart container. Even though it was the same brand of Milk, from the same dairy and the same store. Something about it (undetectable to human senses) was different.

So the owner, because she's a little wacko, went back to the store and bought a brand new Half Gallon jug. All the while thinking, "This is ridiculous. Truly, I have lost my mind". She poured it into the saucer, and lo and behold, Willow dove in and drank it all up. And asked for more!

And now the owner has a refrigerator full of Milk - the old Half Gallon jug full of 'Quart' Milk, which she has on her cereal, plus the new "Willow approved" genuine and true Half Gallon jug. The Other Cats who live in the House don't drink Milk at all, so the owner is making a lot of Milk-inspired recipes, and is in no danger of developing osteoporosis for the foreseeable future.

~ THE END ~

A trip in the way way way back art machine

2011-01-16T19:08:00.000-08:00

I was looking for some old art on CDs (and cursing myself for labeling so many with cryptic things like "Misc. Art 1" or "More art"). So not helpful. And I never did find what I was looking for.

What I did find however were these old pencil drawings I did way back when. I'd forgotten about these. Movie stars. Why? I would never even think of spending the time on this subject now. How we change.

But when these were new, I was pretty proud of them. These were done "pre-art school". I distinctly remember doing them on terrible paper with no tooth, and trying to get most of the drawing done with one HB pencil, and maybe a 2B for the darks. In short, I had no idea what I was doing, except that I had a good eye and liked to render.

I did quite a few more of these, and some private commissions. One lady had an old old old faded and damaged photo of her late husband from WWI and I 'fixed it up' in a nice drawing for her. Other people had me do copies of various photos of all sorts of people and things. My parents were gifted with several pieces of Bogart, the Kennedys, other sundry subjects - until my mother politely asked me one day to not give her anymore because she didn't know where she was going to put them. I think it was shortly after that that I put the pencils away in favor of - not sure what. I think that's about when I started art school, so I was on to bigger and better things anyway. Or at least different.

Funny though - I still like to render things. Maybe I haven't changed that much after all.

(top to bottom, in case you don't know who they are: Marlon Brando, James Cagney, Al Pacino as Serpico, Marilyn, Marilyn again, and James Dean.)

Custom Postage Stamps

2011-01-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

Did you know you can have custom stamps made at Zazzle with your art? Its pretty cool. I'm thinking of getting some done to match some art I'm doing for a mailer. Not sure how 'matchy-matchy' I want to get with it, but if I decide to go that route, its nice to know I have the option.

Here are some of the stamps I've made for my shop ~

The art you submit has to be approved by some behind the scenes official US postal person. I had a couple of my images rejected - the Twix Mini and 3 Musketeers Mini candy pieces, because they were obviously (now I know - duh) too copyright infringey, being realistic renderings of logos. So be warned. Anything too risque or otherwise deemed unsuitable to pass through the mail on a stamp will also be turned down. But if you have art that you want to show off, its a fun way to do it!

You don't have to have a whole shop there to make stamps (or any product) for yourself.

I've been working on both this shop and my new one on Cafe Press. That's for another post, maybe. Not today. I have to get back to the drawing board.

Oh! but I will mention that I made a new set of Little Square Cards - a Valentine Collection.

They're up in the etsy shop.

Its gloomy and cold and very "January" today. The kitties are all tucked in for their afternoon naps, and I'm off to make some fresh coffee and draw.
Bye for now ~

Caldecott winners announced

2011-01-10T10:01:00.000-08:00

Today the American Library Association announced this year's winners of the Randoph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children.

Drumroll .....................

A Sick Day for Amos McGee

Erin Stead, Illustrator

Philip Christian Stead, Author

a Neal Porter Book, published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing

Congratulations!!!!

(Erin seems to only have a blog, not a website.)

Here is an interview/blog post on Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast with Erin from last July, which shows more of her work.

There were also two Caldecott honor books named~

Dave the Potter, Artist, Poet Slave

Bryan Collier, illustrator

Laban Carrick Hill, Author

published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Interrupting Chicken

David Ezra Stein, author and illustrator

published by Candlewick Press

There were also several additional awards given for literature. To read the full list, please go here.

Sardine Valentine

2011-01-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

A little early, but I needed to get it done so I can make some cards and what not.

I had thought about doing watercolors for this, but went back to my default setting - colored pencils. Its all Prismacolors on Stonehenge paper.

I think someone should really make heart shaped sardine cans, don't you?

So you wanna be a ...

2011-01-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

These are too funny! And spot-on, both of them.

This first one is verbatim what we illustrators get from well-meaning children's book writer/illustrator wannabes, all the time. Bless them.

And this one is about someone from the same gene pool, except she wants to be an architect. I studied architecture before I switched over to illustration, so can attest to the accuracy of this one too. (Although I got out while I was still in the 'drafting stairs' phase, long before the 'smoking two packs a day and living in a box by the freeway' stage. Thankfully.)

Colored pencil swatches

2010-12-31T14:47:00.000-08:00

I went on a swatching bender and (finally) made color swatches of almost all my colored pencils. (Everything but the Polychromos, which I know really really well and didn't feel the need to swatch. And also, I just ran out of gas.)

*This isn't meant to be an 'official review' of any of these brands, by any means. More like just an impression by ONE user. For example, I love love love Polychromos, and I know plenty of people who can't stand them, so take what I say here with a grain of salt. Its all subjective, you know?*

First up, the Luminance. These are light fast, which means they won't fade like a lot of other colored pencils will. (Or at least not as much.) They're also expen$ive.

I was at first really disappointed because many of the set of 76 were scratchy going down. I went so far as to email the company as well as the online store I bought them from to ask for a refund or something.

Then I sat down to do another quick scribbly swatch chart to document which ones were really bad - and this time, they worked better.

I think its possible they were actually a bit frozen? from sitting on a FedEx truck the first time around, since I had opened them up almost immediately upon receiving them and did the first round of swatches right away. This second set was made a few days later after they've been sitting in a nice warm house, so maybe that's made a difference. I'm willing to give them another chance.

(And I emailed both companies back to set things right.)

However. Aside from that (let's say they all 'went down' smooth and I was 100% happy with that aspect), I have a couple of picky complaints:

The name of the color is wrapped around the barrel of the pencil (instead of going down lengthwise, like with most other brands) which means you have to turn the pencil around to read the name. I know that sounds like I'm just being lazy, but its kind of annoying. I understand why they did that - to keep the color name from being sharpened off as the pencil gets sharpened down to the nub. OK.

But more annoying than the wrap-around design is the color of the type - its reflective silver, and almost impossible to read, especially when one has a light on over the drawing table. At least for me.

So you can picture this - I'm cranky because the pencils are going down scratchy, then I can't read the darned name on the end. And I'm thinking about how expensive these are, and how much I was looking forward to them, and how I was expecting them to be pencil nirvana. Well, I don't want to give them a bad review, but I can't in good conscience give them a glowing one either. I would LOVE to hear anyone else's thoughts on these in the comments or you may email me privately.

On a good note, they do come already sharpened, and they feel nice to hold, and the color range is fine. And they're light fast, so there you go.

Next up I did my Lyra Rembrandt Polycolors.

Ahhhh, such smooth luscious feeling pencils. And such pretty colors. I did use these a while back on a piece and ended up using my Polychromos to bump up some color at the end. But now I think that if you give them a good burnish, the colors will pop more. I tend to not like to burnish - I'm not a fan of the 'look' (usually, but there are exceptions - and I'm just talking about for my own work, I'm not criticizing anyone else's burnishing technique), and I really really don't like how it makes my hand and arm feel. But over all, the Lyras go down 'like buttah'.

Then I did my whole set of 132 Prismacolors.

It was about time - I've been using an old set forever, that was actually bits and pieces of lots of sets cobbled together, then recently sprung for the new ones. I've used several of these, but also there were many that hadn't even been sharpened!! (That's one drawback of Prismas - you have to sharpen them all.)

Then after I was done I realized I'd done Terra Cotta twice (which means I had a new and an old one in the tin) and also included a Deco Blue, which I know wasn't in the new set, since they're not doing the Deco colors anymore.

Still, it was good to do, because there are some neat colors I hadn't used. There a lot of good sort of neutral beige-y colors like Rosy Beige, Peach Beige, Ginger Root, Putty Beige and Beige Sienna. I also like Espresso and Chocolate (well, no surprise there). And the tried and true French Greys are essential, as are (for me, anyway) Black Raspberry, Black Grape and Black Cherry.

Then I did the Coloursofts.

I have no complaints about them at all. They go down easy and have a nice color range.

I don't have my current Lightfast booklet from CPSA nearby, so can't comment on that aspect of any these pencils at the moment. I know that's their biggest drawback, that some of them fade.

I'm glad I did these swatches - now I know what I have, and how they feel, and have them there on a chart I can hold up to see without having to fish through the tins for a color. Sometimes you need a really specific color for something, and when you have literally hundreds of pencils, it can be hard to find the right one.

So that's it. Now I have to go make some actual art.

Good news

2010-12-31T09:26:00.000-08:00

My reindeer making shortbread won a little award.

Third place in the They Draw and Cook's holiday recipe contest. I'm happy!

Nate and Salli (who are totally cool) put it on the TDAC blog ~

Then it was also featured on the Food Network's blog ~

Thank you Food Network people and Weldon Owen Publishing people for judging my little reindeer making shortbread to be worthy. They and I are both very proud of ourselves!!

Want to know something? This whole 'digital thing' is pretty new to me (which you know if you've been reading my blog a while). I don't really 'do' digital. Until recently. When I started fiddling with my Wacom and Photoshop, I knew I didn't want to try to replicate a super realistic style - and just do it digitally instead of with traditional media. I figured out pretty fast the best way to go for me was to do something completely different. And that's when I started to have fun!

Sometimes I still start out with a pen and ink drawing, then scan it in and fiddle with it and color it with Photoshop. Sometimes I do the whole thing digitally.

I put a little demo of how I put together the reindeer piece here on my site.

This was a nice way to ring out the old year and ring in the new one. I hope this new year is a really good one for everyone, full of good health, good cheer, and good work.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Caldecott buzz

2010-12-29T12:45:00.000-08:00

There's starting to be some talk about who will win the Caldecott this year. (The Caldecott is like the Academy Award for Children's Book illustration, in case you didn't know.) Here's a good article about some supposed contenders. I knew most, but not all of these (I'm ashamed to say) so had to go look them up. I thought you might be in the same boat, so thought I'd share these quick images and links (all pulled from Amazon). I've also put a link to the illustrator's website or blog (except John J Muth, for whom I substituted a video, since he doesn't seem to have a site?).

**This is not an Official List - just speculation by people in the know.**

(Also, the pictures don't link (thank you Blogger), so you have to just use the text link - I know its confusing with the "Click to Look Inside!" on the picture - like I said, I pulled them straight off Amazon and didn't bother to crop that bit off.)

Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes by Salley Mavor

Mama Miti, Donna Jo Napoli author, Kadir Nelson illustrator

Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature's Survivors, Joyce Sidman author,

Beckie Prange illustrator

Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring,

Jan Greenberg & Sandra Jordan authors,

Brian Floca illustrator

Art & Max, by David Wiesner

(if he wins, it will be his FOURTH Caldecott)

A Sick Day for Amos McGee, Philip Christian Stead author,

Erin Stead illustrator

Here Comes the Garbage Barge, Jonah Winter author,

Red Nose Studio illustrator

Snook Alone, by Marilyn Nelson

City Dog, Country Frog, Mo Willems author,

John J Muth illustrator

Chalk, by Bill Thomson

13 Words, Lemony Snicket author, Maira Kalman illustrator

Hmmm. Well, I have my favorites, but I'm not telling. I actually haven't seen some of these up close and personal, so can't say too much.

I'm kind of surprised that this one hasn't been mentioned ~

The Quiet Book, Debra Underwood author, Renata Liwska illustrator

When this first came out I was so sure it had "big award" written all over it. It still may - we'll find out January 10th when the winners are announced!!

Dreaming up new art

2010-12-27T18:41:00.000-08:00

I'm excited about a new series I want to do. Its all about The Pantry.

I've always been fascinated by people's pantries, and love to get a glimpse of a good one when possible (no, I didn't say "snoop". A good ploy is to be helping with dinner, and have the excuse to offer to get something from the larder.)

Very few (OK, none) that I have seen are as cozy and charming as this one.

(I believe its from Autumn Story)

To stock a basic pantry, one definitely needs some dry pasta.

And spices.

And chocolates and olives and capers and tins of things and anchovies and are those chocolate espresso beans in that middle row jar?

I'm not sure about storing the cooked ham in the pantry, but the plum pudding is OK (for a bit) and of course attractive serving ware always helps to dress things up.

This is too perfect and staged to be real, but I was taken with the white pitchers, since I have a collection myself (which I can assure you are not stored in the pantry).

Oooh, yummy looking things in jars.

And cheese! OK, this is not someone's larder, but its cheese! One could keep cheese in the pantry, I suppose, if its cool enough. In my fantasy there is cheese and plenty of it. You know Wallace and Grommit have plenty of cracking good cheese in theirs.

And fancy unreadable labels done with a calligraphy pen.

So anyways. This is what I've been doing - looking at larders and mulling over what I want to do with this series, exactly. When I get started I will post about it, you can be sure. It might be colored pencil, and it might be watercolor + pencil, not sure. Like I said, its in the incubation/dreaming stage. I love that stage.

Here's to your art dreams *clink*

Merry Christmas

2010-12-22T10:02:00.000-08:00

Two Lords a Leaping - they've lept away from the pack of ten and are doing their own thing.
I can relate.

Here, the presents are wrapped (well, almost), the Christmas feast is shopped (well, almost) and other preparations are under way. At least the house is decorated. I look forward to having a warm and cozy time with loved ones. I doubt there will be much leaping involved (unlike over at the Fezziwig's), but there will be nog and sweets and a fire, to be sure.

I hope that whatever kind of holiday you celebrate is wonderful and fulfilling and satisfying and all good things that holidays are supposed to be.

God bless us, every one!

Cat books for Christmas

2010-12-18T16:14:00.000-08:00

Hi - we're Paula's cats. She's busy knitting, and told us to blog something for her. So we're going to show you 2 books we like that have cats in them.

The first one is called A Pussycat's Christmas and it has a lot of really good paintings of a cat by this lady named Anne Mortimer. She's really really really good at painting cats. She's painted a whole bunch of cats and a whole bunch of books. We think if you go look at this one, there will be pictures of all the other ones too. There's another Christmas one with Santa, then another one with Santa and a kitten. Paula has these by the bed and looks at them at night while we're all snuggly and kneading on the blanket. We think the cat in this one looks a lot like Saachi, except the one in the book is a girl.

We like this one too. Its called Cats and Carols and has pictures that were painted by some lady called Leslie Anne Ivory. (What's the deal with the name Anne? Do you have to be named Anne to paint cats really good or something?). Anyway. This one is really good too, and has lots of paintings of cats and has a bunch of Christmas stuff in it. This Leslie Anne lady has painted a lot of other cats books too which are also on the book website when you go look at this one.

We're hungry now so that's all we're going to do. Its raining a lot and we are sooooo borrrrrred because we can't go outside and Paula is just knitting and we've pestered her a lot but she's just ignoring us. She said to tell you she'll check in later in the week maybe and hopes everyone is having a nice holiday week. Whatever. It has to be dinner time, we need to go poke her or something. So guess we're done here.

Meow meow meow meow and meow.

#5

2010-12-15T18:02:00.000-08:00

Who lives at #5? What is the letter pushed under the door about? Who is the woman walking away? Questions to ponder.

I'm getting warmed up to watercolors again after not using them for quite a while. I do of course still love my colored pencils - but doing this same piece in pencil would have taken twice as long, at least. For my children's book work I want to be able to work faster, so am going back to this medium. Oh, its not fast - just faster than my pencil technique. I actually don't mind spending time lingering over an illustration, not at all. Its just that deadlines require one to move it out of low gear pretty frequently, and with pencils that's kind of not possible. One just has to work longer to get the same result.

I had to get used to, all over again, how watercolors dry differently than how you put them on - they get lighter, and duller (not shiny, like when they're wet). Well I knew that, but after using pencils for so long, where what you put down is what you get, it was an adjustment.

Its like exercising a different part of your 'art brain', using a different medium. And I think that's good.

Salley Mavor's work

2010-12-11T09:47:00.000-08:00

{{{ SQUEAL }}}

I've always loved Salley Mavor's work. And now, there is a wonderful blog post on Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast about her and her work, with an interview, and about a bazillion really wonderful photos of her fabric/needlework illustrations. Go see!

(P.S. I didn't ask permission to share this - hopefully no one will be mad at me. I was just so excited to show you!)

That's it. Go enjoy your day.

Little Square Cards

2010-12-08T16:03:00.000-08:00

They're done.

There are three 'assortments' - Christmas, Candy, and Food (which are really just fruit).

You get 24 cards and envelopes in a little square box.

There's a picture with all the images included in each assortment in the etsy listings. If you're keen on these and would like a custom assortment made up, I'd be happy to do that for you. Just send me an email or convo me through etsy.

Once I had all the supplies I needed, and got a system down, they went smoothly. It was that first fumbling around with the idea that had me tearing my hair out. I found some cool round white stickers to seal the envelopes with, which you can leave white, or do your own thing on. I did actually set up and print out a whole sheet of them with images that matched the cards ... kind of crazy. It was a good idea, but overkill. The plain white ones are muuuuuch better.

I'm proud of myself for following through with the idea. I think they're really cute, if not very practical from a money-making point of view. I'll spare you the breakdown, but let's just say, if I charged what they're really worth (mostly in time and effort), I'd be adding a zero onto the current price. Seriously. But its gauche to talk about money, so I won't.

So anyways, that's what I've been up to. And now I need a bit of a break.

Christmas picture books

2010-12-05T09:21:00.000-08:00

At Christmas time I always pull out all of my holiday picture books and 'read' them (look at the pictures) in bed at night. Really.

Thought I'd share a few with you.

I love Peter Collingon's work. He does wordless picture books.

A Small Miracle is really moving - about an old woman who is alone and the nativity scene characters who befriend and help her.

On Christmas Eve is about how Santa delivers presents to a girl who doesn't have a chimney for him to come down.

His books are quiet and full of detail and really draw you in. I just love his painting style (gouache maybe?).

I have a couple more that aren't Christmas, but worth mentioning.

The Tooth Fairy is about what you'd expect it to be about - but its also very not what you would expect. The whole process the fairy goes through to leave the coin under the pillow, then also what she does with the tooth are really neat.

Clever Cat is hilarious - about a cat who gets a job to support himself when his family falls a bit short. I know I've suggested that very thing to mine on more than one occasion, but so far, no takers. ** This one isn't wordless like the others, just fyi.

Shortbread

2010-12-01T14:25:00.000-08:00

I finished my entry for the They Draw and Cook holiday recipe contest. Shortbread!

(click to see this bigger)

This was a lot of fun to put together. I did a little demo of it on my website, if you're interested.

I still start out working with paper and pencils, but the final art is all digital.

In the last post I was talking about this 'reindeer style' and how I liked doing it - but that version was pen & ink plus watercolor. I've updated it to be all digital, and I love working this way.

I do try to make at least one batch of this every year at Christmas time - usually a few batches, actually. Its sooo good. It goes well with coffee or tea or milk, and isn't too sweet. I like that its so deceptively plain, but that you can also jazz it up by dipping it in chocolate or sprinkling sugar on top. Go make some!

In other news, I received a nice blogging award from the Online Graphic Design Degree people.

They've made a list of illustration blogs they like, and I'm flattered to be in some good company. Thank you!

Let's see, what else ... tomorrow looks like its going to be 'getting the tree' day. That's always fun (kind of NOT). Oh, I know, I sound grumpy. I just wish I had a magic wand to have it all done is all - the "schlepping of the tree and making a mess of needles in the car and house, sticking it in the stand, trying to get it straight, and then discovering all of last year's lights don't work" part of the process kind of makes me nuts. After its all decorated and I can sit with a plate of shortbread and enjoy it, then I'm OK.

Also, I finally received the wee little envelopes to go with my wee little cards I was making, so now I have to squeeze in time to get those all put together.

Fa la la la laaaaaaAAAAA. Tis the season!!

Deep ... breaths ...

Illustration Friday - Savour

2010-11-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is "savour". I did this illustration a while back for a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco - they used it as their Christmas card (click on it to see it bigger). Santa is savouring a plate of dim sum while the reindeer, working as waiters, serve him. I know. Pretty silly.

I'm resurrecting this style for a new piece I'm working on. I've always loved these reindeer and this pen and ink plus watercolor style. Last night in bed I was reading "Artist to Artist" (23 Major Illustrators Talk to Children about Their Art), and in it Maurice Sendak says its important to have more than one style, which I thought was refreshing, and goes against everything everyone else usually says (more than one style will confuse art directors, they won't know what to expect when they hire you, etc.). He says "...develop a fine style, a fat style, a fairly slim style, and a really rough style." So I'm not sure how I'd define this 'reindeer style' but its definitely different than everything else I do. And its fun!

I resisted Black Friday like the plague, and will now gradually ease myself into the idea of Christmas. Actually, at this time next week I'll probably have bought the tree and have it all done up. But this weekend I will still savour the Thanksgiving leftovers and this very brief 'in between time' and get some work done.

Inspiration

2010-11-24T18:53:00.000-08:00

This is where I went today~

And this is what I saw ~

The amazing wonderful work of the amazing and wonderful Wayne Thiebaud at the Crocker Museum. The new addition is open (and is not blue like in my pictures, but rather, all white) and is impressive.

The art - well, what can I say. (I hope Mr. Thiebaud doesn't mind me sharing these pictures on my blog - copyright and all that.) There were pieces he did in the early '60s all the way through this year. I was able to get this close to them all and see the brushstrokes and how he layered the paint in places. Some are almost abstract up very close, then magically turn into a basket of fries or a bit of landscape or something when you stand back. The paintings are simple and complex at the same time. A real treat.

Illustration Friday - Sneaky

2010-11-19T12:41:00.000-08:00

She's sneaking up on some lucky person who's about to get beaned with that snowball. Glad its not me!

~~~~~

Still working on the little cards. Turns out the envelopes were on back order, but no one told me, so I have to wait until next week for those to arrive. After that I will have to hustle to get them all put together, since some are for Christmas. Talk about 'last minute'!

Thanksgiving Day preparations are starting to happen. Next week will be full of hustle and bustle, so I may or may not post. I hope everyone has a lovely holiday filled with good company and good food and lots of warm fuzzies.

Its never as easy as it looks ...

2010-11-12T13:34:00.000-08:00

(warning: whining ahead)

How hard can it be to make little cards - right? Well I'll tell you ~

First you get that cool idea. "Oooh, I know - I'll make little tiny cards!!"

Then you start the actual process of figuring out how to make them.

Lay them out in Photoshop so you can print several on one page. Not hard.

Test (aka 'waste') different papers, determining just the right combo of the image looking good plus foldability. Settle on something after printing way too many on paper that will now be used to line the bird cage.

Trim them all. Start with a trusty utility knife and straight edge and cutting board. Think "this is crazy" and go buy a 'cutter' at the crafts store. Decide the cutter is a cheap piece of crap, and go back to the utility knife. Think "this is 10 cent an hour slave labor - is this really what I went to art school for?".

Ruin several cards, and realize the knife could probably use a new (aka 'sharp') blade. Change the blade and be momentarily amazed at just how sharp a new utility blade actually is, and realize this is a job that needs to be done while very WIDE AWAKE with no distractions. Do quite a few, until attention starts to wane, and pack it up for the night.

Think it might be cute to have rounded corners, so use the cute little 'corner rounder thingie' that was also purchased at the craft store. Practice diligently on 'bad paper' until confident to move on to the real cards. Make several 'just slightly off' cuts which produce a notched effect rather than a perfect rounded corner (usually on the 4th corner of a card, which looked like it was going to be successful).

Throw bad card into basket. Try not to calculate just how much this is costing, what with paper, ink, printing and cutting and folding time (oh we haven't even gotten into folding yet!). Go pour a drink. Ponder what made us think this was a good idea to begin with. Wonder how all those people on etsy just whip this stuff out like its nothing. Question our very existence. Eat something.

This is the evil, EVIL, corner rounder thingie. This is the little orange machine-like punch thing that not only doesn't work perfectly every time, but also can give you carpal-tunnel in the punching arm after about 10 minutes of use.

I'm still waiting for the envelopes I ordered to arrive. And figured out after the fact that they are 'ungummed', meaning you can't lick them to make them stick shut. Will anyone care? There isn't a 'gummed' option in this size. A lesson in "read the fine print". I knew it was too good to be true when I found them. If I don't use them, I will have a box of 1000 wee tiny envelopes taking up space in my closet. What to do, what to do ...

So that's what's been going on at my place. And now you'll know why I'll be charging $25 a card when they finally get up in the shop. Oh I'm kidding but not by much. Lets add in the 'joy' of experiencing the craft store with its 3 different awful songs playing simultaneously over the loudspeaker in different parts of the store to get all of us shoppers 'in the mood' (one was Christmas, the others were just everyday annoying - and if you stood in the right place you could hear all three of them at the same time!).

But let's see if I can end this on a positive note. The amazing genius computer guy came and fixed my Photoshop issue. YAY. And did some other fiddly stuff while he was here.

I'm working on some art I can't show, so that's a drag, but the way it is.

And I just bought some new candy to draw - some new taffys and other goodies, so that will be fun.

So hopefully the next time I post I will have something to show for my trouble, and there will be less whining.

Pumpkin ice cream awaits!

Ugh, computers

2010-11-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

... they can make you cry.

I'm having an "I can't open Photoshop" issue at the moment (which no doubt has something to do with the new printer I set up yesterday). Long story short, tomorrow someone will be here in person to sit down in front of this machine and tinker with things, which I hope is more successful than the poor online tech help people who have been walking me through steps of opening folders, deleting, uninstalling, testing, ad nauseum that you'll be familiar with if you've ever had something like this happen to you).

I'm grateful that I at least have the internet and mail! - but no Photoshop is like not having lights or running water to an artist these days. One can scan in images, but not open them up or print them out. Or if one actually does their work using Photoshop, its much more dire a situation. Thankfully I can still use my colored pencils, but am a little shocked at my own dependence on this one program!

So I thought I'd better post something, just in case (knock wood) more things crash and burn - fingers crossed they won't!!

I'm doing little 2 inch square cards with my candy art ~
I ordered wee little square envelopes and can't wait until they arrive. They're so cute!

Of course getting the cards actually made is on hold until I get things sorted out with this machine (as is all other art production type of stuff, phot0-making, posting on etsy, etc.)

Sigh.

In other news, I received a copy of Childhood Wonders, a new book out by National Geographic, which is using one of my illustrations - Cozy Quilt.

Its a sweet book. (My piece is the laaaast one in the book, page 128, if you do the "Look Inside!" thing on Amazon.

Here's another link - to Random House, who has a neat 'look through the book' feature.

And I think my Spaghetti alla Caruso recipe is going to be in a cookbook - not sure of the details yet.

I'm pretty pleased with myself, considering that piece is the first real 'pen and ink plus digital color' whole illustration I tried! Maybe I won't give up on that style quite yet after all ...

And there you have it. I have to go tidy up my workspace, then do some 'coloring' - and praying to the photoshop or computer gods to put everything right. Wish me luck!

Plaid Season

2010-11-01T19:53:00.000-07:00

Now that Halloween is over, we can really get into the part of Fall I love. Today I pulled out my Indian corn, preserved Fall leaves and cedar and little pine cones and decorated up the house. I love this time of year, its like New Year's to me. I get a real battery re-charge when the air gets a bit chilly, sweaters come out of hiding, and rich plaids appear. I go all funny over a nice Pendleton wool plaid anything, and collect 'fat quarters' of cotton and flannel plaids. Once when I was gushing over some stack of holiday plaid squares I'd just bought, my Mom asked "what are you going to do with them?" and I said "just look at them, for inspiration". (insert raised eyebrow look here)

These two pieces were painted with watercolor. They're roughly based on actual clan tartans - with good bit of artistic license thrown in! The 'decorative side' of me could just sit and paint this kind of thing all day long.

So Happy Plaid Season everyone! - just remember to wear them responsibly.

Slo-Poke

2010-10-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

Once you open the bag, you just can't stop.

This one is fitting, since I'm kind of a slo-poke myself about some things.

This is all Prismacolors. Getting the right color is always a fun challenge. For that darker shadow color on the yellow, I ended up using some of the putty colors as well as a grey, a violet and a couple of yellows. With yellow its always a challenge to not make green or something else you don't want, when you mix something with it. More so than other colors I've found. Usually I trust my gut and go for it - not very scientific or professional sounding! Sometimes I make a little scribble on a separate piece of paper as I go along to mimic what I'm doing on the actual piece, and test the color I'm thinking of doing next to see what it will do. But not always.

I really do have to shift gears into some other work now, but I will try to get some prints of these candy pieces done and in the etsy shop over the next week.

This one is for sale.

Bye for now ~

Twizzler and Tootsie Roll

2010-10-26T06:33:00.000-07:00

A dentist's dream. More sugar!

I had fun doing this one! And have been eating a lot of Twizzlers since that package was opened - they're not individually wrapped so can't be handed out on Halloween. Can't let them go to waste you know.
This was a commission, and is not for sale.

This was fun too. I love how Tootsie Rolls come in this size, the "foot long hot dog" size (well, that's what I call those long skinny ones) and the jumbo super-size. This one is for sale.

Both pieces were done with Prismacolors and Polychromos on Stonehenge.

May do just one more, then have to shift gears for Christmas. Its the start of "burn the candle at both ends" season. I'll be shifting into painting for some new pieces, so that should be a fun change of pace. I'm working on art for licensing and have a commission to do some card images, and I will be 'thinking' something other than candy! I think that's a good thing.

No Excuses Watercolor Sketch Kit

2010-10-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

This is such a cool thing! Watercolor artist Laure Ferlita has a wonderful little video on her blog about how to create this simple, 'take with you' watercolor sketch kit using water soluble colored pencils and a water brush. Brilliant.

Thanks Laure!
Be sure to look at her whole blog as well as her Imaginary Trips site. How fun.

Today we're getting our first real storm and its a doozy! My little wild kitty friend, Jasper, wasn't on the back porch waiting for breakfast as usual - it was a wet mess. So I was worried about him, until I opened the front door to find him out there instead! Smart little guy, switching his 'waiting place' to a drier spot. Why on earth he won't just tuck in inside the house at night in this weather is beyond me. He goes somewhere nearby that's safe and dry and just shows up to eat. So I guess he's OK, but you know how it is when you're a 'mom'- you worry.
Anyway.

I hope to finish up a commissioned project today (which I probably won't be able to show), then am onto the next one. I'm doing several pieces for people to give as Christmas or 'other occasion' gifts, and can't show them because, well, someone might see them. If you would like to have me do a piece, I can still work in a few more in time for the holidays. People are doing candy, still lifes of food, and some with objects that have special meaning. They can be small or large, and done to work with a room's color scheme or whatever you like. Just send me an email and I'll be happy to work with you on your idea.

Stay dry everyone ~
Go Giants!!!!

Illustration Friday - Racing

2010-10-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Vroom vroom!

Sneakers can go pretty fast (especially ones drawn with colored pencils).

Bad little gummies

2010-10-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

No, these are not finished. And they most likely never will be. I just wanted to post something about how things don't always work out, but that's OK. (And I also wanted to post some COLOR after those last couple of very black posts!)

I had the bright idea to do some gummy bears, and decided on 3 red ones. I picked through the bag trying to find ones that actually had features and looked like something other than blobs, but really, they were all pretty blob-like. Also, these were extra small, which I don't think helped.

I took some reference photos and was all excited to try to capture them in colored pencil. But for whatever reason - distraction, lack of focus, starting with the wrong color - or some combination of all three, this is where I've ended up. The one on the right is burnished to death and can't possibly take any more pencil.

I wanted to get that beautiful translucent light that makes them look like what they are, but I juuuust missed it. Then I got kind of mad and just started 'coloring' aimlessly, hoping I'd hit it right by accident, but of course just got further off the mark.

So I will probably try these again, in a different 'pose', and see what happens. It was fun to try these, and although I'm bummed that this one didn't work out, I learned what I did wrong, and will hopefully get it right next time.

Making Black with pencils

2010-10-19T18:40:00.000-07:00

(click on this to see it bigger on another page, if you like)

(this is the same swatch board, only switched to greyscale)

In the last post I was talking about black colored pencil and said I should do some swatches.

So I did.

(I also have to say that I misspoke about the Polychromo black being a blue-black - it isn't at all, its rather grey in fact. I must have tweaked the image in Photoshop at some point and corrected the color for some reason. So apologies.)

I did a 1 inch x 2 inch swatch of all the blacks from all the different brands of colored pencils I have. This is by no means a complete list - I don't have any Luminance, or Verithins, or several others. What I DO have (and swatched) are Polychromo, Prismacolor, Coloursoft, Blick Studio, Lyra Polycolor, Graphitint, Inktense and Derwent Drawing. I also did some graphite - Cretacolor Monolith, Prismacolor Turquoise, and Staedtler Mars Lumograph 100. Then I played with making some combinations of colors to try to get a sort of black without using any actual black.

I was surprised at the results of this little swatching exercise, I must say!

I used a piece of white Stonehenge for the support, used a tight circular stroke and light pressure to build the color, and kept them all "dry" (Inktense and Graphitints can be used with water) since that's how I like to work - dry. I also didn't burnish or use a blender or anything like that. Just straight pencil.

Check out the second version of the swatches, which I switched to greyscale in Photoshop.

The really blackest blacks by far were the Coloursoft Black, Prismacolor Black and Inktense Black.

Lyra Polycolor Black Medium and Derwent Drawing Ivory Black were the next 'blackest'.

Then after that everything was a bit disappointing. Oh, they'd all work as 'black' just fine, depending on the value range in a piece, but most were more like a nice dark or medium grey rather than inky black.

Lyra makes 3 blacks - Medium, Hard, and Soft. The Black Hard looks a lot like the Cretacolor Monolith 8B Graphite.

The Polychromo Black is a very warm dark grey, really, and has a very tight good coverage.

The oil based ones (Polychromos and Lyras) are similar in the way they 'feel' going down, the Blick Studio feels dry to me, the Coloursoft is "like buttah", etc.

Each one has its pluses and minuses - one might be 'grainier', one might have a softer look, one might be a perfect black for shadows on concrete, one might be a perfect black for something else, etc. etc. etc.

I had fun playing with layers of color to try to make black. None of them came out actually 'black', but in a piece with a particular color scheme, they could all work I guess. The one thing I did find is that its very easy to make grey or brown, but a really dark black is another thing.

The first swatch (on the right column) is Prismacolor Black Raspberry and Indigo Blue. The second one is Prismacolor Dark Green and Black Grape. The third is Prismacolor Sepia, Black Cherry, Imperial Violet and Violet Blue. After that we have Polychromo Chrome Oxide Green, Dark Indigo, Mauve and Sepia. The the last one is Coloursoft Dark Green, Indigo, Purple and Brown Black.

You could go on forever trying different combinations.

Whew!

I should really do this with all of my colored pencils - I've done it with all my watercolors and gouache, and refer to those swatch boards almost every time I paint! So let's see ... 132 Prismacolors, 120 Polychromos, 72 of this, 72 of that ... sigh. Sounds like a semester - long school project, doesn't it? Well, maybe I'll do a few at a time. I know that I do get frustrated with my Prismas, since a lot of the lead colors don't seem to accurately match the wood casing, and with the Polychromos so many of those cool pinkish reds like Geranium Lake look very much alike sitting in the tray next to one another.

You're welcome to pull this off to use as reference, but really, I suggest you make your own swatches because the whole point of the exercise is to understand your pencils and to have a 'live' set of true color swatches to refer to.

Have fun!