Protein Pumpkin

 My daughter said she made protein pumpkin muffins. Naturally, this is what came to mind.

When I sent this to her, she said it could be a jacked-o-lantern.

Which resulted in version 2.

Happy Hobbit Day!

 

Work in Progress

 

Realized I haven't posted here in a while, wanted to post something I've been working on!

Sketch

 Watercolor sketch to prepare for my next painting.

Smug Boy with Gnome

He needn't look so smug. Catching supernatural creatures in the hope of magical gain almost never works out.

This was a bit of an experiment. My daughter asked if she could paint in my sketchbook, so she made a tie-dye pattern. She didn't like it, though, so I asked if I could paint over it instead. I've never tried painting over tie-dye before, I liked the randomness of the field I was working on.

Let's all respect and love our elders

Up to now I've never, and I want to stress never, posted anything political. But seriously, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick? I couldn't help myself if you're going to say things like that.

And I'll take any excuse to do Aztec art as well.

#respectelders #respectelderly #seriously

November Facebook Banner

Turkeys draw wingprint people in November.

Artist Process, or Georgia Sun

I always start in pencil, then do the final inking via light box. But the Georgia sunlight shone through the closed blinds so strongly that I couldn’t see the light from the box! Fortunately, I had a dark (and holiday-appropriate) blanket to help out.

Nose

I dreamed that I made this drawing last night, so when I woke up I drew it. Dreams can come true!

I'm pretty sure I was dreaming about avocados because my daughter and I were looking at Halloween costumes yesterday, and one of them was an avocado. I'm seriously thinking of that one for this year.

Make Way for Dumplings

My wife told the kids to clear the table to “make way for dumplings.” And so, this.

Bates Elementary School book talk

Got to talk about The Silver Rings at the Bates Elementary School today. They were great kids! They asked a lot of really insightful questions - in fact, it made the talk go better because they would often anticipate some of the topics I wanted to talk about. Also got to give them a drawing demonstration, which was a lot of fun for them (and me)!

And then afterwards, signed some books - even two to the library! So many kids asked to read it that they ordered the two. A really fun school to speak at!

The Evil Queen

Got to ink it in at last! Here she is, the Evil Queen, in this particular instance inspired by the self-same villain from ABC's "Once Upon a Time."

Ultimately, I want to add color, but I'm not averse to line art fairy tale illustrations. Like those by H. J. Ford, who did the drawings for Andrew Lang's Fairy Tale books. H. J. is a big inspiration to me. As is Franklin Booth, who may not have done fairy tale art but is just plain incredibly amazing.

New Sketchbook 3: the other daughter's request

My oldest daughter wanted me to draw a picture of her. I like doing that – she's old enough to sit still, and I get practice doing faces.

With this one, it looks like her – three years ago. I guess parents really do think of their children as little, even when they're still little. Either that, or my ability to shave years off a subject when drawing them means I will have an incredibly lucrative portrait business.

They Draw and Cook - the recipe half

Good news and bad news with this. The good news is that they liked it over at the They Draw and Cook site. The bad news is that it doesn't qualify for their holiday contest. My mistake, really – I thought it was to get a recipe to them in time for the holidays, but what they meant was a recipe for the holidays. So, as much as I'd have liked to have gotten it in to the Food Network contest, even I have to admit that the fish swordsman doesn't really match the theme. Even reworking it with a santa hat instead of a samurai helmet probably isn't going to do the trick.

However, if the Food Network ever celebrates something like Ninja Month, I'm soooo sending it in.

On a side note, big big big thanks to my wife for the recipe!

The Woodcutter Story: Several Problems Resolved

This isn't a post about new art per se, although some of that comes into it. It's more about composition and consistency.

In the Frog Prince book, one of the things I liked most about doing it were the split-screen pages, like this one:

But, because of the way the story went, I didn't really have an opportunity to use something similar for the Woodcutter story. But this kind of bugged me. All the pages seemed so... flat. Granted, all pages are, but it was especially noticeable in this one because of the style of art and how little action happens on some of the pages.

In particular, this page caused the most problems:

It doesn't seem like it would, but it did. Because it's just him standing there. So I got it to where I was happy enough with it, and decided to continue on with other ones. Then, as I was moving along, I got to page 17 (which I'll show in a bit).

On that page, I had to show the bad woodcutter throwing his axe in the water, while at the same time he was pretending to cry. In any other style, I could make this work in a square format. But since the (self-imposed) restraints on the style of this book means I can't use shading, perspective, etc., I was stuck with a composition that was hopelessly horizontal.

The problem was solved, of course, if I could break it up like the Frog Prince story. But I hadn't done anything like that so far, so it would look weird in the context of the book, even if I liked it by itself.

Then I remembered the problem page. If I broke that up, along with its companion page, I'd get this in earlier, and fix the page that was bugging me. Here are the two new versions:

And here's the new one that forced me to overcome the composition problem:

They all look similar here, but in the book they'll be separated by a number of pages, like the split-screen ones in the Frog Prince. The only thing I miss in the silver axe page is that I showed the tree he was standing under in the original version. I liked it, but it couldn't carry the whole page, so out it went.

The Story Continues

Oh, those sneaky mermaids. Good thing our hero is so honest.

Complaint is Voiced and a Test Devised

Wherein Woe is Expressed and a Mermaid Enters

Back to the pages. This one is different than The Frog Prince for me. For some reason, it was easy to come up with Moy Moy's expressions on computer. But for Gavin, I need to sketch it out first, scan it in, and trace it on screen. Every page I do this, while for The Frog Prince I think I drew 2 rough sketches for the whole book. I'm not sure why; maybe without a floor-length dress, the main character shows more body language, which I can render best in pencil first.

Below is an example from an upcoming page:

I like the looseness of pencil. But the bright colors and shapes are better for a toddler book, when it comes down to a finish.

Salescake

I was making up a story for the kids, to keep them entertained while we were driving. The story involved a salesperson who was actually a cake. So he's Bob the Salescake. This makes more sense when you realize the rest of the story involves vegetarian anteaters, rocket-powered bicycles, clouds in a school locker, and a bear (there's always a bear in the stories I make up for them. They seem to like bears).

The illustration style is vaguely Tenniel, the illustrator of Alice in Wonderland. Yep, I've been re-reading the Alice books again because the movie came out. Actually, the movie didn't really do much for me at all, so if I hadn't been reading them beforehand, I probably would be starting now to clear my head.

At any rate, I like the older style of the Alice illustrations. Since I don't really know how to do etchings, I decided to go instead for sepia on aged-looking paper. Yes, I know, actually quite unlike Tenniel's drawings, but still, I tried to go for something that could be an etching instead of being a painting or a watercolor. And Tenniel's illustrations were, in fact, engraved by the Dalziel Brothers, so I could always look at it like that. This is what I'll send off to the engraver for printing, I'll tell myself in my Victorian-illustrator-wannabe mind.

Totally loving this older-looking paper – it's the same one I used for the Valentine's Day/Chinese New Year card. More of this kind of drawing will inevitably show up again sooner or later.

Interludes upon interludes

And now, a short break from my short break from Hansel and Gretel. Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year (the year of the tiger) fall on the same day this year, so I just had to do a card that included both. I left it up on the computer so that my wife could find it this morning.

I would feel like I'm wasting the chance to market a perfectly good holiday card here, except for the tiny fact that the likelihood of the year of the tiger and Valentine's Day occurring together again is pretty small for the next century or so. But in 2110 or whenever, I'll be so ready with this card.

But I've been working on the Frog Prince as well, so I'll be back to interrupting Hansel and Gretel in no time.