Free Vermoosin' Coloring Pages and an Introduction

For the coloring pages go to the end of this post.

      I was looking through the last few blog posts I did and realized I haven't really posted any of the illustrations from my new line of Vermoosin' Products yet. I've also been wanting to post some more free coloring pages for kids and since this bunch of illustrations belong entirely to me and I have good line drawings of them, I have the freedom to do that!

    So far I only have  a handful of illustrations as I rarely have time to work on my own projects. I have big ideas in my mind and am still considering doing a couple of different styles to see if maybe the full line is done in another medium or style than this. Actually the moose on the bottom right was done in watercolor as it was originally a design i made up for my wife for valentines day.  I worked in digital for the rest as I started out thinking of doing screen printed T's and needed to have a limited color pallet, but that route didn't work out and so for now I kept things simple using zazzle as my printer.  www.zazzle.com/sneezingleopard*

    The illustrations I have so far.

         I'm hoping to eventually kickstart this project so I can actually give it the time and money it deserves. The moose's name is Kirby (my wife's home town) and I've begun to develop an entire back story to his existence which one day may make it into a children's book. He's a young energetic Vermont moose who pretty much enjoys any Vermont sport you can imagine (hiking, yaking, bowling, fishing, biking etc.) and of course his favorite drink is Vermont maple syrup which gives him all the energy he'll ever need for his wacky endeavours! I'm sure I'll reveal more of his story as time goes on but that's the basics.

some of the products you can find on my Vermoosin' store www.zazzle.com/sneezingleopard*

        Now for a few free coloring pages for kids to print out and use their own style to color in. These line art drawings were done with fine tip markers and then vectorized with inkscape to create clean crisp bold lines. Feel free to print out as many copies as you would like for students, doctors office, or your own kids. I would also love to see what they come up with so please send me a copy of their finished art to matthew.gauvin@gmail.com . If I get a handful of submissions or more I would be happy to show them on my blog with your permission. Enjoy!

FROGZILLA!!!! and other stories

Recently I've been working on one book project that has four stories within the book. Rather than illustrating every single page of the story we've decided to give each story one full page illustration and one spot illustration. I've come to believe this is going to make for  a much better book than most of my typical children's books as we have plenty of room for the text and plenty of room for the illustrations. I get to take the main action of the story and make two illustrations rather than trying to make twenty plus illustrations for each story which can sometimes result in a  lot of watered down illustrations. It also allows me to spend a bit more time with each illustration than I might normally be able to. Rather than trying to draw each character twenty times in different poses I can focus on each pose and facial expression until i feel it's right.

I've even found myself doing LOTS more ambitious spot illustrations than I would typically undertake. In the end I'm feeling that lots of things are coming together on this project that will allow me to produce my best work BY FAR to date. That's somewhat ironic as each new week presents challenges and i never really seem to know how much longer I'll be able to keep at this full time. Yet I've wondered about that basically since I started illustrating full time over six years ago! 

Caricature Drawings

I'm currently in the process of starting up a little side business for my caricature work. This short video describes how this all got started for me and where I'm headed with it via fivver gigs on fivver.com Since I'm still new to Fivver I'm currently only able to list small gigs for $5 but once I've done a few gigs and get good feedback i'll be able to offer more options for higher prices. i briefly touch on that at the end of the video but would like to show in more depth where I'm headed for anyone interested in getting a fuller version caricature done now. Feel free to contact me at matthew.gauvin@gmail.com with questions or to commission me for a caricature or other illustration project.

BBQ LOGO 3: Vector Art

BBQ LOGO 1: Clients original Logo and my initial rough concept sketches
BBQ LOGO 2: Refined pencil sketch and discussion of tangent points

  Over the past month or so I've brought  a few projects to completion and dug in deep with a couple of more recent projects. This BBQ logo design was started months ago so i was quit happy to finally bring it to completion.

                                                    First I did a finalized ink link drawing.

Then I did the final digital art. We originally wanted to use either watercolor or oil paint for the final but the client eventually decided they wanted to have the logo blown up large enough to go on the side of their concession truck. SO at that point I made the leap to digital art and discovered a way to vectorize the final art. More on that below. I did a few samples for the t-shirt design but mostly focused on the business card design as my starting point that would lead into the other product designs.

The business card design process involved many steps. It would take too much room to show all the process but I have a sampling below. Basically I did font samples, background color samples, layout samples. The client liked a cropped version on a  black background so i then refined that further with a few more ideas involving a gradient background color.

So to this point I had designed, business cards, t-shirts and product labels. Now I needed to take this art produced at a fairly small size and enlarge it to a really huge size without losing any of the quality. Typically an artist would create the original art in adobe illustrator as vector art but I didn't have the option available to me as I generally work in traditional mediums. So for this I turned to an online program called "vector magic". In my initial tests I immediately noticed the vector traced sample was horrible quality. The below image on left shows my original digital rough sample I did with shading. On the right is the vector file which shows harsh lines and shapes on the shaded areas instead of smooth transitions.

So I determined the best way to end up with a good vector was to do the original digital art with flat colors. This in the end  feel also lead to a better logo overall anyway as it simplified all of the forms and colors to the basics.

For those unfamiliar with vector files. Basically typical images are in pixel based formats which use small dots/pixels to display the image. Vector uses mathematical equations in the form of shapes of color to display images. So vector files are easily scalable without losing any of the quality. This logo as a vector file can now be enlarged as much as the client wants and it will keep its sharp lines. Pixel based images get blurry as they are enlarged.

American Milking Devon Bull

  
Over the past few weeks I started work on my second assignment for The American Milking Devon Cattle Association.  I did some finished drawings and oil illustrations of the cows last year. This year they need illustrations of the Bull. The ones along the bottom are from last year and along the top are what I have so far for this year. I'll likely still need to make changes before going to finals.

As you can see, the bulls have more muscle on them, their heads are bulkier, their horns are designed more for damage than for elegance and their legs are wider and stronger. The females have a large pouch to hold the milk while the bulls . . . do not.

          My main art director while working on these is the farmer who got me the gig in the first place. He's a large part of the association and knows Devon cattle and bulls like the back of his hand along with many other subjects that he's been involved in over the years. He's owned a number of businesses and has spent hours on end telling me of stories from his life. When I told him about my girlfriend he immediately rambled off "Women are a kingdom, men are a fool, take away his senses and wear away his jewels". The pic below is one I just realized I accidentally caught of him in the background as I was taking pictures of the bull. I wanted to do a sketch of him while he talked but I'm still a bit too shy for that.

He went on to tell me why the bulls have such wide legs, making sure I made them strong and straight like a piano. He wanted the neck long to indicate a healthy beast that could reach the grass, Strong necks, heavy brisket, and he had me move the horns up. I think the horns will still need lots of work to get them looking big, powerful and heading in the exact right direction. I've found the horns to be the most difficult part to illustrate on both versions. I even made a clay model to try helping with that. From this angle the horns would be in a  weird position in which the horns fold back over themselves but it doesn't look good when I draw it that way.  I must have spent over an hour on the horns alone. So I may need to go have a better look at the bulls from various angles in person now that they are outside of the barn. Wish me luck!

BBQ Logo Design:Two, Tangent Points

For the first post in this series click HERE

      It's been a while since the first post for this series as the client got really busy over the holidays and needed more time to respond than normal. Well they have now responded, so I was able to do a near final drawing. We've improved on many areas since the first drafts.
Sometimes I get a bit ahead of myself and do the final drawing before the sketch is really ready for it. I think that happened a bit with this image. A couple days after finishing the line drawing I realized there are some unnecessary tangent points in the image that draw too much attention. I think the one that gets the most on my nerves is where the VT shaped stake just barely touches his rolled up sleeve. So I will likely adjust them in the drawing or in the final illustration. I also noticed the pupils are different sizes and I'm not quit happy with the lines yet as there isn't a good pattern of thick and thin. Those will be easy to fix in the final art.

The red circles indicate some of the tangent points in the image. In general it's a good idea to try and eliminate tangent points like these as they can be a bit confusing. It's best to overlap shapes to help show what's in foreground and what's in the background and so there is no confusion as to where on abjects stops and another starts.

"A Cloudy Day" Final Drawings

I have  afew minutes before I take off for the night so i figured I would post a pic of the final drawings for my newest book. Tehse aren't in order int eh phtoo or anything. Just sprayed them with fixative adn getting ready for the acrylic medium before I start the final paintings! This book is called, "A Cloudy Day" and is my second book with author Peter DaPuzzo. It's more whimsical than my othe rbooks which I've foudn I like quit a bit. I'm using acrylics for this book which is the firsttime I've used acrylics for a book. I've done three books in oil, two in watercolor/ mixed media, one in graphite. Eventually I hope to do a digitally painted book. One day I suppose I will settle on one medium.

Teen Chapter Book Cover Design: Four

For earlier posts for this cover design:
thumbnail Sketch
Rough Sketch
revised dog

  In the past few days I refined the characters even further for the final sketch, then dove right into the color samples. The deadline for this project is extremely short so I'm a bit out of my comfort zone and cutting out various steps to move things along as quickly as possible. In the last post I showed my revisions for the dog character. In this final drawing I revised the face to better match the initial character design,
I completely revised the structure of the birds bodies, moved the legs around a bit on the dog to strengthen his pose and I shortened his neck and tilted the head to get back some of that aggressive quality in my initial dogs sketches. Finally I added some rough indications of clouds circling the moon.

For the color samples I tried all kinds of things with the sky and experimented some with how the "silver Shuttle" object in her hand would be painted with a glow. These are just rough to get a feel for final color and tonal structure of the piece.

IF: Scary

I haven't posted on Illustration Friday for a while so I'm overdue. I'm actually working on an image at the moment that illustrates the word!!! Particularly surprising since the word is "SCARY".

I was at the local archery shop the other day and the owner asked me what I do for a living to which I replied I'm a children's book illustrator. My friend happened to mention my recent blog post about the BBQ company logo I'm working on. I then explained that I may be getting a bit of BBQ product from that client and said we should hold another cookout and say that we shot the pigs ourselves with our bows. Of  course the shop owner just happened to have a pig skull on the wall from a pig he had shot,LOL. He was a bit confused when I started showing interest in the skull as a reference for one of my current projects. HE asked, "wait, didn't you say you were a children's book illustrator?"

      The funny thing is that the pig skull actually would have been a great reference for one of my current books as I needed to design a crazy, scary looking dog. As I've done almost no work of this sort, I don't have a reference library for random animal skulls, animal muscle anatomy to exaggerate the ferociousness of the creature etc. Luckily I did have some great art website resources available to me that helped a ton. The birds in the sample above still need a lot of work but the dog has already undergone quit a transformation and still has a bit left to go.

The first one was drawn mostly from my head as an initial impression using mainly wolves as a reference.The second one actually was never intended to look like the taco bell dog but somehow references of dog skeletons, wolves, panthers, lions etc. lead to that puny little woof. The third one I feel finally hits the nail on the head.  

Monster Book Cover Design: Two

A few months back I posted the initial thumbnail sketches for the cover design of my new Children's book "Allegra Friend of All Monsters" HERE  . From that series of thumbnails the client chose number four as our starting point.

Eventually we ended up incorporating more background stuff into the image.

Then I finally tightened it up borrowing heavily from an internal image while simplifying things a bit to better suit the cover design. Then I did  asuper quick color sample. I was kind of tiered of doing samples by that point and just wanted to get into the final artwork.

I then did the final artwork and did a super rough layout.

Now all of the artwork is finished for the book and our graphic designer is doing the final internal layout. Below are some rough cover sample layouts I've been working on to try and figure out which direction to take it in. I'll play around more with the back cover color later but for now I'm trying to ge tmy initial title concepts on paper (so to speek). I think I have apersonal favorite out of these and others I'm seeing might not work as well as they did in my head. I'm hoping the graphic desiigner will be interested at giving it her best shot as well, so we can get a large range of ideas to chose from. Fonts and text deffinetly aren't my area of expertise I also don't have a large font database available to me. Anyway, which direction do you think I should head with these?

This book is expected to be published by the end of September. My previouse book just came out and is available on Amazon! The Little Boy Without a Name and Without a Birthday

black and white truck Illustration

Just got a logo/t-shirt /business card design gig at the beginning of the week on a short deadline and already finished by the end of the week. Wish all my projects could be like this. I may do a final color rendition in the future if the client wants that but for nwo he needed something quickly for a truck show he's headed to in a week or so. I started with these rough thumbnails thinking he wanted something a bit more cartoony.

 I soon realized he wanted something to depict a particular model and year with a certain level of detail so from there I eventually got the below design. I also got him a great deal with the printers, $40 off!  If you ever need any truck parts for the sort of truck mentioned below, you can contact him via the e-mail along the top of the image.

IF Launch

This week's word for Illustration Friday is Launch. I could think of nothing more appropriate than my cats favorite passtime. Two of their favorite passtimes are "Launching" and "Plopping". They will launch themselves from the cat tree and land on coffee tables five feet below. They will launch from my lap to my keyboard or from my buearu to my stomach while I'm sleeping. They seem to have this great knack for knowing the exact instant I'm just about to wake up because for some reason I always seem to wake up just moments after one of them launches themselves onto my stomach. Funny how that works. Too bad my sense of humor doesn't kick in until sometime in the afternoon.

    As for plopping, they will plop down and go to sleep on just about anything so long as it's something I happen to be working on. They love to lay down on my drawings and walk over paintings. They really seem to love sleeping on my scanner, keyboard, on my chair etc. The harder they fall and the wider they can streatch out their legs to scatter art supplies, papers, coffee, books or whatever is in reach, the louder they pur. They particularly seem to love plopping down in front of me while I'm trying to walk by them. Over the years this has made me in to something of an olympic athlete in the sport of Cat dodging.

Black and White Line Drawing Kids

I really don't plan to post all of the illustrations from my current books but I just finished off another yesterday and can't resist the urge to post it. So here it is.

The first is the thumbnail sketch, then the pencil line drawing of "gerti" and the turtle. Then the last is the near finished image. The dark black pen and ink lines were working good for the other  spot illustrations of objects but looked horrible for kids faces and hair. I tried a couple fo times and couldn't get a pleasing result with the pen and ink. SO I did a bit more digging looking into other artists. Then I found Denise Brunkus who uses a dark graphite pencil for the line drawing and then fills the drawing in with ink. I loved the soft edges of the pencil for the face contours and the gentle gradation in the hair and the fact that the pencil seemed to be easier to draw lines of varrying width and leave breaks in the line without looking bad. This final image is inspired by that medium and artist.

Chapter book Line drawings / Black and white Drawings

Final artwork for my first chapter book is underway! For this project, as usual, I started with some small thumbnail sketches of each illustration concept.

Then I chose one of the simplest and favorites to try out some different finished results. Since I've never done finished black and white chapter book illustrations before, I needed to see what style looked the best. I looked at lots of line drawings from other artists to get a feel for what others are doing. I could  go to a museum or pet store to take a picture of a box turtle and then copy the picture detail for detail, with a beautifully rendered pencil drawing, with all levels of shading and value, but that's not what we were going for with this particular project. I hoped to have an end result that would be a mix of realistic and yet have a spark of life and character. Some of the artwork I was looking at was perfectly rendered linework but it was all very even lines with no defferentiation in width adn nothing to help the eye defferntiate between forms in the image. I tried a few things and the client and her family chose the one that works best for the kindle and looks best overall ( Ink line, shaded in ink). I also experimented with digital linework on Inkscape and Illustrator but after a few hours of frustration I realized it would take too much time to get that to look beter than my hand drawn stuff.

Then I went ahead and drew all of the images as line drawings on heavy duty paper and scanned them in. This would allow me at the very least to print them off later in case I made a mistake on the first version.

Then I just went to town with the ink trying to have a variety of values.  

I've got four more of these small spot illustrations to go and about five full page illustrations and one color cover illustration for this book. The working title is "Samantha and the Box Turtle" and will be available on amazon for the kindle and other e-readers sometime this year.

Illustration Friday- Bicycle

My third Illustration Friday post. I found out that TONS of folks stop by the blog from Illustration Friday so now of course I'm hooked! Plus I just happen to have another preconcieved concept that goes along with this weeks word, "Bicylce".

    This was originally a very quick pencil sketch I did in a sketchbook. Not sure what brought it on as it was  a few years back. Now for this weeks IF I decided to make it a bit more of a finished ink line drawing. May color it someday if I ever find the time and may find a way to put it on some zazzle products. For the original sketch I wrote BORN TO BE WILD in some fluid large type, reminicent of John Handcock's signature. If I make this into t-shirts or something I would probably put some kind of humorous saying along those lines in there.