Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Highlights Comics from the Illustrators' Party

    
This year's Illustrators' Party at Highlights was the weekend of September 28-30. Pre-party the illustrators were asked to fill out a Sketchbook page which would be complied into a bound book. The results are amazing with some very clever ideas from some very talented illustrators.

Thanks to Kelley Cunningham for including me in this book and for sending it to me since I was unable to attend the party this year.

Here's to next year!

Monday, October 1, 2012

Digital Progression help from Folio Academy



Here is the same piece from the last post with an added a background. 
I did it all on the computer without my usual scanned sketch. 

These experiments in digital illustration all started from two of 
Will Terry's tutorials on the Folio Academy
a source that I highly recommend. 
There are lots of other tutorials on the site and they are all very reasonably priced. 
Check it out!

Meanwhile, I have more to learn....

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

More digital experimenting

I've been experimenting with digital painting without outlines. It's a lot like painting, wonderful to see the shapes of things and how they relate to one another. The corrections were easy to make and I had a lot of corrections!



This is the original from my sketchbook. The technique was a deviation from my usual habit of starting with a tight line drawing. Digital painting was way more fun!



Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Update on "...and the dish ran away with the spoon"

Last year I posted some preliminary work on this piece and happily moved on to other projects. When I got a chance to work on it again, the cd file was missing from my studio! Gremlins?!... or did I clean up the studio so well that I trashed it? Yes, .... trashed it from the computer. Oh well, it was a chance to look at it again, and make better decisions on the color.

Here it is, still in progress, but mostly worked out. It has been fun to have the time to work on the color.



And here are the preliminary color sketches.


Friday, June 15, 2012

In Progress Completion

This piece was originally posted in December 2011. I finally got around to finish it and am posting a little progression of the artwork.

Here's the first.....


and an in-progress color version......


and the finished piece with color corrections......


Friday, May 18, 2012

Visiting Young Authors

Yesterday afternoon, I had a delightful time with the winners of the young authors' contest from Morningside Elementary School.  At the invitation of my friend and Morningside teacher, Mrs. Peggy McBee, I participated in the awards ceremony and gave a small presentation as the "celebrity artist" to the winners and their friends and families.

It was my great pleasure to celebrate these talented young children and receive this lovely bouquet of flowers with mementos from the school. What a fun afternoon! Thank you, Morningside!

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Recent Work - Color Corrections

So far this year, I have been fortunate to be working on a project that involves scanned line drawings, colored digitally.  Since my Photoshop skills are limited, this "on the job" training has been great for applying what I know and learning more.

I chose a subtle palette, thinking it would be better for the biblical subject matter, however, for a young audience brighter colors were preferred. These corrections were easily made with Photoshop. What a time saver!

Here a the examples of the color corrections.

Original color......



And the corrected color, brighter and much more saturated.


Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day!



This illustration is the original that was redesigned for the header of this blog.  It was one of my first attempts at digitally colored illustration.  It started the progression of experimentation which has been challenging and loads of fun.  

Sweet Valentine wishes for all!