Pond Watercolor Sketch

Over the past weekend I had a bit of time for a couple more small watercolor sketches. I'll probably be posting a few of these every so often. They are all are around 5"x6" and took about 15-30 min. In many cases I consciously simplify objects to favor having a finished sketch in my allotted time rather than a more detailed unfinished sketch.

        

Pigs under the post office:one

Over the past month I've enjoyed finally putting in some quality time with my new children's book " Pigs Under the Post office". We've designed characters and narrowed down to the final thumbnails and I'm hoping to have the final drawings done by the end of the week.

 I did a bunch of thumbnail sketches for each  page of the book then the client and I chose the ones laid out below.

Beagle Watercolor Sketch

I've decided to try and bring my watercolors and sketch pad with me more often as I find myself away from the studio more and more these days. In my adventures with my fiance I've been in all sorts of places I would have loved to sketch or paint whether it be up in the backwoods on her four wheeler overlooking a beautiful farm scape at sunset, out on the water in kayaks observing the natural beauty of waterfalls and the powerful arched gnarly trees that lean out over the water, snowshoeing through snow laden forests and fields, or the long road trips that have carried us into many wonderful sunsets. I've seen more wild animals with her in the past few months than I have seen in my entire life here in Vermont. Moose, deer, foxes, raccoons, peacocks (well on a farm), rabbits, beavers, geese, fish and the like. So finally after many years as a practicing artist I've decided to get better at sketching. Here's my first go at it!  This is Biscuit who was kind enough to pose for me Saturday after a long day of helping Barbie at her weekend job. I'm thinking this was about a fifteen minute sketch, 4"x6" watercolor.

Mature Milking Devon Bull

I don't really have much I wanted to say about these Bull drawings. I just wanted to post the finals since i posted some process work a few weeks back. The first set are of the male Bulls and the second are the female cows I illustrated last year for the same client. These aren't perfect by any means but I am pretty happy with them considering all that went into them.

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!

"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.

Black and White Graphite Chapter Book drawings

Over the past month I've been working on a few projects, one of those being my second chapter book. I don't have much time to talk about these but wanted to finally post them on my blog. I also figured now would be a good time to finally figure out how to make an animated GIF to show my process, something I've wanted to do for a while but never took a minute to figure out. Turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be! SO above is Gif showing my process for one of the images and the final three drawings below. They still aren't 100% done as I have to make tiny adjustments but none the less I'm quit happy with how these turned out an hope I get more projects like this. I was very surprised to find out that these graphite drawings took almost as much time as  a finished oil illustration (probably because of how much time was put into designing the various creatures and settings and the extra work put into preliminary shading of sketches). These are for "The Silver Shuttle" which I have posted the cover illustration process for already in a series of posts.

 The image above is a scene inside a tunnel inhabited by a worm creature. I won't go into all of the specifics of all of these (you'll have to read the book!). For this image I will say that the walls of the cave at this point in the action have been covered by tons of glowing strings which have also wrapped around the worm causing it to decay. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how  to best draw a dark cave as though it was being wrapped by glowing strings.Unlike paint, I knew I wouldn't be able to just add more white on top later if needed but need to figure out the best way to preserve any whites I needed. Keeping in mind erasing can only go so far and can effect later pencil work. I did experiment with painting on top of the graphite and photoshop ideas as well but really wanted to stick with graphite if possible. I was heavily relying on the work of Chris Van Allsburg as he is really the only really amazing graphite artists that I know of off the top of my head. He's quit famous for getting spectacular glowing effects in his expertly rendered graphite drawings.

 For this image, one of the more difficult aspects was trying to show detail in the main two characters heading into the tree, while keeping the main focus on the enormous tree. I needed to pull out far enough to see the context and to see a good amount of branches while still being able to see those two main figures.

 This last image had all kinds of difficulties for me.The most challenging aspects are the swan shaped "lamp" which had to be glowing and the explosion of water surrounding Annie. In the end I didn't worry as much about whether her shirt and skin and rocks look wet as this wasn't intended to be a photo realistic depiction but I did struggle through those things as it can be hard for me to let those things go sometimes and to know exactly how much information to include.Instead I focused on the main action, imagined what the creatures wings would look like with the light shining through the thin webbing,  and really focused on showing the details in the swan while still having that glow.
           If the image had just been a character standing ina   well with a flashlight I may have spent more time differentiating the rocks with their own characteristics, shapes, adding lichen, tree roots, etc. I may have had stuff floating in the water, had her reflection etc. but for an image like this with so much other action I needed to zone in on the really important aspects to favor telling the story rather than overwhelming with too much info. The good thing about chapter books is that they have plenty of room to elaborate on all of those details to help the readers mind go to work in filling in all the little things that can't be fit into one single drawing.
      This book should be available before Christmas if all goes well with publishing. Very excited to have this one sitting on my shelves as I truly enjoyed reading the story, love the themes and imagery involved along with the settings. I'll be sure to announce it's arrival on Amazon.

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.

BBQ Logo Design: One

Along with my new chapter book, I've also been working on a new logo design and a new children's book. The company needing the new logo is "The Bottomless Pit Bar-B-Q". We started with their current logo which is actually a stock illustration and their current t-shirt design which was done by a friend of theirs.

With these images as a starting point, they told me they wanted one image to serve both the needs of the t-shirt, the business cards AND for printed lables to put on their products. They also wanted the main character to be a mixture of pig and man standing at a grill. So i set to work finding reference photos of pigs and hefty men and got the bunch of rough samples below.

From these, so far they like number six for the face but I'm guessing we'll want to put  a bigger body/belly on him as they want the name of their business actually written acrross his apron. They're also planning to send some photos of the actual grill they use to try some samples with that. I'm guessing it looks something like that T-shirt drawing above. A bit boxy and angular but I think I can make it work without it looking too much like a coffin. Personally I was kind of leaning more towards number one or seven but was getting a bit worried that these may be too detailed for a small business card. So I made  aquick sample and printed it off. Looks good even at the small size.

Teen Chapter Book Cover Design:Two

For part one of this cover design: Part One
Been drawing a lot of flying creatures and tons of photoshop work trying to figure out the composition for my new book coveer. I think things are getting much closer! This is still a rough draft as I have to completely redraw her face and put in lots more detail for the creatures. probably going to work on color samples a bit today.

Teen Chapter Book Cover Design

Finally getting in some serious time on my new projects so I'll be posting sketches from a couple different projects over the next few weeks. For now just taking a moment to post some very rough preliminary sketches for my new chapter book cover design. The book is "The Silver Shuttle" by Jennifer Hayes".
This is really only the second book I've done for this reading level and is going to be a ton of fun! For this book I have the opportunity to do three very detailed shaded graphite renderings of action packed scenes and one cover illustration which I hope to do in oil if time allows. The only catch is that I have two other in depth projects going on at the same time and only have about three weeks left to work on this chapter book, YIKES! Back to work.

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.

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.

Birthday cake Line Drawing

I have a few minutes to post something tonight but had a hard time figuring out what to post. I've got a ton of great new illustrations for my new book but want to wait til it comes out before posting those. I have a bunch of ladnscape paintings I did but want to wait til I get soem posted on Etsy. I've got a bunch of new character designs I want to post but need more time to write a bit about how I achieved various aged characters. I also have a bunch of in progress posts but all need more work. So for tonight I decide dto go ahead and post a line drawing I did of a birthday cake for my new book "The little Boy Without a Name and Without a Birthday". This cake line drawing got me thinking about the possibility of doing a coloring book for kids and so one of my clients and I are tossing around the idea.

          I generally don't get a chance to do what I would consider finished line work like this. Usually my line drawigns only serve as  a ground or boundary for me to paint over or within so I don't worry about having good looking energetic lines as much. Actually I used to do mostly oil paint so the lines wouldn't show at all but lately I have been thinking a Lot more about line quality as I moved into watercolors.  I new I wanted line to be an iportant factor in my watercolor art as that is one of the main things my oil paintings were missing. SOmetimes I would love the drawing I did for an illustration but then loose that spontaneous energy when slaving over an oil painting in which the line ulitmately got covered up. It's much easier to swing your wrist with apencil and get a great arch than to do so with an paint brush loaded with thick opaque paint.

       Recently I also got my first chapter book gig in which I will be doing lots of finished line work and now just foudn out about a second chapter book that I will be starting up in the next few months.

Illustration Friday, "Duet"

This is my first ever Illustration friday submission! Lately I've seen artists everywhere participating in this websites weekly drawing exersize and have wanted to participate. I thought I would never have time to do so, but when I saw this weeks word "duet" I immediately had an idea come to mind and decided to stop all else and just sketch the idea to paper as fast as I could. Here's the result. I wish I had time to color it but maybe will do so later. Enjoy! (click for larger image)

Rough Sketches for my Monster Children's Book

              These are three of the rough draft drawings for my new Illustrated children's book "Allegra, friend of all Monsters" . I usually try not to post more finished artwork from books this early on, but in this case I'm soo excited about how this book is turning out that I simply can't resist posting some samples. What's soo exciting about this is that these are what I would consider to be the least action packed scenes of the book and yet I feel even these have so much great detail for the kids to enjoy. I keep telling people that with every book I do I can see my art progressing by leaps and bounds and that certainly rings true for this book. Of course I still have  sooooooo much mroe to learn that it can be a bit overwhelming at times. 

      

God has been so great to me in allowing me to continue down this path over these past few years. I can't tell you how many times I've felt I might need to get a different job that pays more substantially and yet God keeps providing just when I've tried everything I know how to do on my own. The past month has been a bit of a roller coaster ride not knowing what was in store next and getting down to the last few dollars in my bank account for the first time in my life. I'm generally extremely good at saving money and not over indulging even when I have money. So for me to nearly run out of money is beyond rare.

     As Lent was just around the corner I knew I would have to make some tough decisions in regards to my time and money. Should I spend the day helping the Knights of Columbus with the fish fry?, should I go to stations of the cross and the Young adult Holy Hour?, should I spend the gas money to make it to Parish council meeting when surely they don't need me there anyway? In the end I decided that I needed to go to these things more than I needed to stay at home searching for my next gig. I had always heard that you put God first in all things and he will provide for you all that you need, for as the bible says " he knows all the hairs on your head" (Luke 12), "he cares enough to feed the birds in the sky and clothe the flowers of the field and so surely he will do the same for us" (Mat.6),

       Now once again I find myself overwhelmed with work and just baffled at how these new clients searched me out. This isn't something I did. So anyway, just feeling extra thankful to be a children's book illustrator at this time in my life. I've been thinking a lot lately about how I tend to delete more of what I write than what gets posted or saved or sent. I suppose this second part is something I would delete as it's getting late and I would deem that this isn't anything I set out to write in the first place. I also generally wouldn't necessarily think an art blog is the best place to write about my faith in any way. But for tonight I'm choosing not to delete this and just to proclaim How amazing God truly is for those who trust in him and allow him to be their all in all, king of kings and Lord of Lords. I may not always get to be a children's book illustrator but I'm certain that whatever I do, so long as it's in the name of our Lord, it will be a great and joyful thing to do. Thanks for reading. God bless!

Character Designs for New Children's Book

            Below I've posted a quick introduction to my two newest characters for my current book "Allegra, Friend to all Monsters". A ton of work went into the monster character in particular even if it's not necessarily evident from the final design. But collectively the client and I are happy with the final design.

I'm planning to post some of my process work for designing that character sometime to show how involved that process can be from the initial forty rough designs sketches up through the various fur patterns and appendages and body shapes .

I always wonder how different a given character would have turned out if I had the opportunity to design something completely on my own, without client guidance and having to stick to the words of a story. It's not that I feel I could necesarily do a better job on my own as I really do feel that client or art director input is vitally important to help me see things I can't see on my own. However I would be lying if I said I never wanted to chose other thumbnails or character designs over those chosen by clients. The important thing is that by the end of the book i usually agree full heartedly with the final product.

Other posts about these characters here

For a great book on character design check out the link below.

Monster Character Designs

click to enlarge

Please vote at left on which monster design is your favorite. These are just the very first rough draft of monster samples for my new book "Allegra, Friend of all Monsters". I will be narrowing these down to about three and then experimenting a bunch more with those three to get interesting variations and really push the design to it's fullest potential. Actually I'm hoping my client will narrow it dow to his favorite but none the less I would love to hear other peopl's opinions.

        I do intend to play around more with all of the features, the eyes, ears, nose, mouth  etc. placement on head, size, style.  look like but want to narrow it down to a rough body type first. Then I will also probably play around more with the size relationships of the body parts. Maybe he will have huge arms dragging on the floor, or  a tiny head with huge body or huge head with tiny body. But obviously I don't have time to try those options out on all of these samples. So help me narrow it down. The monster in the book is supposed to be about three feet tall, green, friendly and fuzzy. Some of these look too much like actual animals rather than monsters and some may get close to known charcters without me being aware of it. So please feel free to mention that as well in the comments.

To see the final character desing click here

Dinosaurs in outer Space Background

An updated sketch juxtaposed over some reference photos for the background and a bit of photoshop mixed in. This is roughly how the client wants the background to look and will help me in working out the final Illustration.

Process Sketch for dinosaurs in Outer Spcae

It's been a while since I've posted. I've been too busy to post about the topics I have been wanting to. Lately I've seen a lot of blogs where artists just post in process sketches. Since I love seeing that sort of thing I figured I may as well do a bit of that. SO here's a really bizarre piece I've been working on and having a lot of fun with. Still a long way to go.