It's been a while!

Wow! It's been a while since I've posted on this blog!

Here's a post in honor of the first anniversary of 

I'll Take My Chances, 

written by Mark Burrows and illustrated by me.

To quote the Galveston County Daily News...

"This is the perfect picture book for parents to use 

to encourage young readers to put themselves out there 

and keep on keeping on."

Here's hoping you'll check it out!

"My First Hidden Picture" Illustration of the Year Award

In late March, I was surprised to get a wonderful award 

from Highlights High Five Magazine,

"The Hidden Pictures Illustration Award".

This Award was for the Hidden Picture

I illustrated for the May 2013 issue of High Five,

titled, "Riding My Pony"

Thanks to Kathleen Hayes, Editor, Christine French Cully, Editor in Chier,

Kelley Cunningham, the Art Director 

and everyone responsible for granting me this award,

as well as Jody Taylor Brown, who got me started doing Hidden Pictures.

I am extremely grateful for their appreciation!

Young Authors' Awards Ceremony 2014

These lovely flowers were a gift 

from Morningside Elementary School in Port St. Lucie, FL

and my friend, Mrs. Peggy McBee,

the coordinator of the Young Authors program there.

This was my 3rd year to be a participant

in the awards ceremony for the very talented group 

of young authors from grades K-5. 

It was a delightful opportunity for me to witness their creative ways 

of combining words and pictures into books.

Thank you, Morningside and Congratulations, Young Authors!!

PBAA Flip Book App

The PBAA Flip Book is available...

and it's FREE in the App Store!

Check out all the Kooky Characters you can make

 out of characters illustrated by members of Picture Book Artists,

 my mermaid included.

Fun!

"...the little dog laughed..."

Here is the finished illustration. 

As you can see, it has been through some alterations!

Now, the whole series needs to be unified.

This will mean some adjustments to the other illustrations.

Stay tuned!!

Work in Progress "....the little dog laughed"

Still unfinished, this post shows

 the many adjustments that have been made to my current illustration. 

The good thing is, by blogging about it, 

I am seeing what I like and what I'd like to change.

How wonderful that the corrections are so easy to make

on the computer.

Here is the latest illustration with a head from a previous sketch. 

The face seems a little more fun to me.

This is what I thought was a finished composition....

I really like the sketchy quality of the following preliminary drawing. 

I will try to recreate the same feeling in the finished artwork.

And below are the color sketch and original idea.

I think I have some more work to do!

Hey, diddle, diddle......

It seems that summer provides a chance for me to move on 

with some digital painting.  

Continuing the series on the nursery rhyme, "Hey, diddle, diddle",

here's a progression from "the cat and the fiddle",

an, as yet, unfinished digital illustration.

Young Authors Visit

Last week, I was invited by Mrs. Peggy McBee, 

to address the winners of the Young Authors Competition 

from Morningside Elementary School.

What an incredibly talented group of students! 

It was my pleasure to demonstrate some drawing 

and hidden picture tips for them to use on their next project. 

As a bonus, I got this lovely hydrangea!

Thank you, Mrs. McBee and Principal Mrs. Cortina Bell-Gray

and all the winners!

PBAA Flip-book Character

This recent digital painting is my character 

for the Picture Book Artists Association Flip-book. All the artists are submitting a character 

for this promotional work which will be an imaginative piece. 

I can hardly wait to see them all together!

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!

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....

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!

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.

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......

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!

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.

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!

Rejoice!

This is the season to rejoice!
Here is the sign for rejoice. In a monthly feature for The Little Lutheran magazine, I illustrate signs to a song. Even though I have illustrated many signs for these pieces, I still don't know them all by memory. Practice is needed!

Merry Christmas!

8 Days of Hanukkah

Tonight begins the 8 days of Hanukkah.

To celebrate, I'm posting one of my illustrations from Rainbow Candles,  A Hanukkah Counting Book.
Happy Hanukkah!

A work in progress

I like to work backwards!  Here is the little girl from an earlier post. I added some penciled atmosphere to the illustration and will do the fun coloring the next chance I have. Stay tuned!