To the Publishers!

It's been some time since I've had the time to post here. Sorry for that. But I have accomplished quite a lot!

First off, I've had all of my Illustration promo pieces printed! I made my own letterhead, post cards and sample illustration cards. They came out so well!

                                                                        Letterhead

Reply Postcard

Sample Illustration Business Cards

I wanted to carry on my idea of the little girl's soaring imagination, so on the reverse of all of the cards she's daydreaming about flying with her corgi pals.

It took me a while to research all of the publishing houses that I wanted to mail my packet to, but I have a nice little list of 10. Yesterday I mailed them all. Now to await a reply. Hopefully this will be a start of something great!

Thanks for keeping up with this process! I can't wait to start on my Illustrating adventure! :)

The portfolio

It's coming together.  I haven't had much time to blog about any of the process lately, and I do apologize. But here are a few new works for you to take a gander at. I'll try to tell you bit about them as you scroll through them. Enjoy!

This image was painted vividly in my mind after reading the first few chapters of "The Fire Chronicle". Quite a violent storm is about to disrupt everyone at the garden party. This really got me back into using colored pencil for projects instead of acrylic. I'm still toying with it, but am enjoying the results so far.

This was just something I thought of while sketching. A bratty little girl has a birthday dinner party, and tosses her food onto the waitstaff as the parents give no attention to her poor behavior.

And finally, from one of my own stories, a boy watches his secluded grandfather in his dimly lit library.

The last three.... just practice.

Airship

quick sketch of a painting

Just a silly announcer, I love the color in his coat though.

Thanks for looking! :)

Finding a Style

   As I may have noted earlier, I'm not very happy with the look of my style or characters. They're too flat I find, so lately I have been sketching only characters faces to see what works for me. Here are few pages from my sketchbook.

I liked this character, but I want my style to really reflect what I love to create, so I've been copying the masters...

    Sketching from my favorite Illustrators is helping me to be a little more creative, and understand their process. Brett Helquist, Illustrator of the Lemony Snicket series has such a unique style that I really admire. He doesn't over do it. The eyes are a simple black circle, but they look so realistic conveying  lots of emotion.

Michael Knapp is another favorite of mine. His work is simple yet creative. Here are a few of my attempts at drawing his creations.

Working on more as we speak! 

The White Stag

I saw a painting similar to this on instagram and fell in love with it.  We've been needing a little something to pop color on these bland walls, not to mention it would coordinate with our furniture. So, I had to create it!
Large canvases are really expensive! One this size would have cost me 36 bucks! I went to Ross to look for some reject paintings or photos and ended up finding quite a few! This canvas in particular was only 19.99.

It's pretty ugly.... But it is just what I needed!

After getting home I proceeded to cover it with Gesso (Jess-oh). That was really fun. Haha!

       The printed words weren't covering well so I added black to make it all act like a primer. (Yes, I did have to prop it up with a chair. Also, "That's what she said!")

The the slate colors were combined

Next was the grass. I love that color combo!

     I'm not a gung-ho painter, I nearly always cheat and sketch out my image before painting with chalk. Shhh! lol

And that's him! I made him a bit too tall- cropping his antlers :/ They looked awesome in the photo, so I'm a little dissapointed in my mistake, but I think it turned out great.

Looks nice in the living room! This was my quickest painting by far. I finished it all within a day! Woo hoo!

Next up, a mini collection of landscapes! 

And I want to start a sketch crawl group in my area... hmmmmm.

Playtime

      I sketched this one with childhood memories in mind.  My siblings and I would take our cats inside and dress them in doll clothes.  They totally hated it, especially our oldest cat, Blue Cat.  He used to stick his tongue out when he'd had enough of something, but he always stayed calm and gentle while we tugged on his ears and tail. I used to hold the tip of my cats tail and watch it wiggle haha, so that's where I got most of these ideas.

     I learned a few tricks along the way with this one. Such as keeping little jars with the paint I've mixed for large areas. It helps me to quickly cover mistakes without wasting paint or remixing the wrong color.

Also, drawing with my white charcoal pencil is a big help, because the chalk easily mixes with with the paint.

All in all, I learned a lot with this Illustration, but It's not my favorite . Can't put my finger on why I don't like it, I just don't. Oh well. 

Here's a few process photos....

Bo-Peep Sleeps

  Again, being told that fairy tales are good to have in your portfolio I've come up with the Bo-peep idea. Basically all of her sheep run away to town while she's asleep and do human things that they wouldn't normally be able to do otherwise. I may turn it into a book on my own, but for now I'm Just having fun with the idea. Austin likes these best because their faces look so dumb ha ha! Anyway, that's the latest!

Baaaaah!

Still Working on It

     It's true. I've been procrastinating on getting my portfolio together. I blame it on the Easter holiday, Finals for my husband, and lack of creative ideas.  Mostly I've just been burnt out and can't think of anything cute or quirky to paint. Must be writers block but for artists. Cleaning up the house and setting goals has helped a bit, and so does making things for others.
    My Niece, Miriam is having her first dance recital this weekend. She lives many states away and I won't be able to attend but I made her this card.  She adores everything pink and is quite the fan of Angelina Ballerina. I quickly threw it together with a few Prismas and leftover craft paper. If anything could have helped to get my creative juices flowing, this was it.  Sketching a simple little character created another spark  of creativity and I'm slowing getting back to Illustrating!

Hopefully I'll have lots more to post soon! If you have any ideas, don't be afraid to send them my way!

For Miriam:

For Jack

     My cousin's little guy is battling cancer at St. Jude's.  He's nearly 2 and was diagnosed with neuroblastoma. I made this to encourage thoughts and prayers for him and his family. I was told he likes trains and animals, so I added in a few details. It should be made into t-shirts soon. We are all hoping Jack pulls through and everything goes as smoothly as it can.

Hang in there little Jack, you can do it!

"Play Date"

I've finished it! Well, for the most part. I think it turned out decently.
Long day - short post. Sorry, but you get the picture...

Ideas & Information

  Over the past month or so I've been researching what it is exactly that I should be doing to get into the Illustration business.  So far I've found a couple of good books, and have brain stormed for new portfolio ideas. The books I found most helpful were "15 Steps to Freelance Illustration" and "The Business of
Illustration" both of whom authors names skip my mind.  The first book takes you on a paced, broken down realistic process of getting to where you need to be. It talks not only of the artistic demand of the job but also the financial and professional aspect of Illustration. I found it a kuh-zillion times more interesting and helpful that the latter (maybe that's why it was on amazon for a penny?).  15 Steps also comes with a workbook guiding you to make realistic decisions on why and how you will go about becoming a professional.  If you're an budding artist looking into how to get started, I HIGHLY recommend this book. But enough on the technical side of this, I'm sure I'm boring you already.


     As for my ideas, I keep seeing and hearing advice on creating fairy tale pieces for my portfolio. Feeling as it's a little overdone, I made my own rendition of,  "The Three Little Pigs". Maybe that bad wolf was just misunderstood and really only suffers from season allergies? Who knows...

The Colored Houses

    Finally finished! I plan to send this out as my 'post card' for publishers to view. Had a lot of fun with this one! I did run into a few hiccups though such as getting the sky color right and adjusting to the canvas grooves (I'm used to painting on flat board). I had originally painted the whole canvas blue in hopes of smoothing out my surface a bit, which it did, but it made it much more difficult for me to perceive the colors properly because the blue was so overwhelming. It also dulled some of my colors and caused me to paint multiple layers, thus creating too much touch up work, pushing the project behind. Note to self: don't do that again!
But overall, I am happy with the end result! Here are a few photos of the process start to finish.

                                                            Started with alllllllll blue.......

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I find it easier to transfer my drawings onto the painting after I've decided I like that look for sure. 

Saves me from painting over poor decisions!

-Final product-