Another charcoal value pass for “Ruby June and the Voice of the Sea” where Ruby June has found the hidden temple. This one was a bear! I had to use a different brand of canvas and found that the new canvas wasn’t primed as much as my usual brand. It was really hard to push the charcoal into the canvas. By the end, my workspace was covered in fine charcoal dust. I told my co-workers that I was trying to re-create post Industrial Revolution London.
Finished painting the cat. My daughter should be sooo happy now. She might even wait 3 minutes before telling me the next one to work on. So I added some food stains to the shirt, after all, he is the ship’s cook. Even if he were dressing up for the portrait, I imagine he would be a little limited with respect to clean clothes.
Here are the charcoals for the next animal in that series. This cat is going to be the ship’s cook so I wanted a little less formality to the clothing. I’ll probably stain it up with some food as well. Played around with some color studies today so depending on my workload, I may get to painting it tonight. I think this one makes 8, so only 18 more to go and the book is done! Hooray! (I’m also plugging away on another Ruby June book page so there is that as well to interfere with my animal painting productivity.)
My daughter was not pleased that I had started mocking up a comp of a vulture before working on the cat. Her response to finding out I was finally working on her cat was, “Now start on a dog.” Ah, to be 4 years old.
Felt terrible about not posting over the weekend (freelance and kids birthday parties getting in the way) so I thought it might be nice to show off a few images of the process. Here I am working from the initial thumbnail. First I tone and grid off, blocking in my shot with my eraser, then I determine the direction of my light source and start applying that to the forms. Next I start to push the value range and flesh out the rest of the value range. Next stop is color studies and then painting on top of the values. That won’t be for a little while, though as I am getting all the panels to this state and then will apply color at the same time, so the colors are consistent.
This is the panel where Ruby June blows the Voice of the Sea and breaks Coo-Thoo-Loo’s spell. Hooray for our heroine!
This was the first small scale animal painting I worked on. Originally it was just for my daughter to take the place on her wall of the huge piece, “Princess Burlap Sack,” that intimidated her. Since then I’ve done a few other animals and it has evolved into an ABC book. As I get closer, and complete more of the paintings, I’ll continue to post them and keep everyone tuned into the progress of the book!
Lots of irons in the fire, as you can tell by what I am posting here.
I finished another charcoal piece for my book, Ruby June and the Voice of the Sea. This panel depicts her coming ashore to blow into the magic horn to break the spell over the deep ones. Of course, part of the inspiration for the book comes from H P Lovecraft. I still feel there are not enough Lovecraft inspired children’s books on the market. Hopefully I can remedy that. I’m debating on naming the octopus in the work Coo-Thoo-Loo.
The charcoal is what I use as an under-painting, setting up my values before I paint on top of them. Once I have finished all the charcoals, I plan to paint them all at the same time, making sure my colors are consistent throughout.
Worked on a painting for a colleague of mine. It is soon to become the header image for a Florida Nature Blog (http://floridanatureuncovered.com) Not to worry about the empty space below, that is where all the bloggy type stuff goes. Yes I am mindful of my compositions.
“Princess Burlap Sack” is a triptych created with the intention of exploring the use of very specific imagery to spur the creation of a narrative where there was not one initially. I also thought something whimsical and HUGE would be fun for my daughter’s wall. Turns out it was just a little too huge for her so I had to find another home for it.
I decided that my daughter’s room needed something to liven up the walls and so have embarked on a new triptych that will take up a lot of space in her room. I wanted to create something whimsical and invent for her a new princess that might spur some stories. In keeping with my desire to create a non-specific narrative with the viewer, allowing them to imbue the work with their own story, I created some specific elements within the work to hopefully draw the viewer in and spur them to finish the story.
I met Ethan Long, accomplished children’s book writer and illustrator, yesterday and he graciously accepted to look at a few of my previous dummy books. It was a hard and honest critique, of which I was extremely grateful. Good critique from seasoned industry professionals are very hard to come by. He said he liked my sketch work but my paintings seemed to lose some of the activeness. The books he reviewed were early works so perhaps my new work has evolved to a point that my new paintings are where they need to be. I’m sort of regretting not having brought in some of my new paintings. It did make me a little nervous, wondering if I am on the right track with this book. It is quite an undertaking. I’d hate to think that 8 months of work are moving in the wrong direction. Still, I have committed to it and I hate to have an unfinished project so I will press on.