Illustration Friday - asleep

And here's the colored version. As I seem to be doing increasingly often, I scanned the sketch and colored it digitally which helps preserve the liveliness of the sketch. When I transfer a sketch to watercolor paper and paint it there often seems to be some loss along the way.

sketch for illustration Friday

Today's prompt is "asleep". I won't finish coloring my response today so here is the initial sketch.

Work in progress

This is a double page spread for a story I wrote that I'm working up for my portfolio. I'm debating whether to add line or just try to work more on the figures. At the moment I feel the background threatens to be too important and distracts from the drama of the interaction. You can click on the image to make it big enough to read the text.

I want some!

But do the other two want to share?

Illustration Friday - soaked

When I was growing up we had an expression "lovely weather for ducks" meaning only they would enjoy being so wet. I posted this on my blog rather recently (inspired by our very wet spring) but it fit the Illustration Friday prompt rather well and there has been too much going on at my house recently for creating new work so here it is again.

The joy of movement

Dancing is always fun, but some are more naturally graceful than others. I made her dress and his shirt by scanning in fabrics, making them the base layer and then erasing through to them from the drawing layer.

Caped avenger

Here it is in color. Watch out all bad guys - here come the righter of wrongs and his trusty sidekick!

Action!

I probably won't get this colored today so I'll post the sketch for now. I started with the idea of a cape and showing figures in action and this is what developed.

Illustration Friday - safari

Unexpected things can happen on a safari. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be licked by a giraffe? I hadn't until today but this picture is the result of that thought.

Yay Katie!

Kid number three graduates from college this weekend. Congratulations Katie!

Back to watercolor

This was one of two possible illustrations I did for Stories for Children magazine (link). I couldn't decide which I preferred so let them decide and they picked the other. One thought that they had, which hadn't occured to me, was that this seemed an unnaturally tidy room! I decided it must have been some kind of wishful thinking on my part that had me draw it this way as my own kids' rooms never looked this tidy. This was painted in watercolor with an overall warm yellow wash to start with so as to create a unified mood, then black ink outlines added at the end.

Playing in photoshop

These two were created by scanning in existing patterns or pictures and then adding (or subtracting) in Photoshop. The one on the left is a section of scanned dress fabric with a little flower fairy painted on top. It's the first time I've tried drawing directly with the stylus on the tablet - takes some getting used to. The right hand picture was created by scanning a photo, adding the drawing as a layer on top and then erasing the balloons and the leggings to get to the layer underneath. The other colors were then added to the drawing.

Stuck inside

Another quickie. It's hard to have to be inside when it's spring and the weather is beautiful. This was my first idea for last week's Illustration Friday prompt "lesson".

Boy and rabbit

A quick sketch quickly colored. I trust he's intending to give that carrot to the rabbit and isn't teasing him with it.

Illustration Friday - beginner

As a cautious person myself, I find all my sympathies are with the beginning swimmer!

May blossoms

This was the May page for a calendar I did. One thing I can do in photoshop that I can't do in watercolor is to make totally smooth gradations from one color into another.

Still learning

The left picture is essentially the same as yesterday's but with the background lightened up a bit. The right one is my attempt to be more painterly, covering over the drawing lines and letting less of the background tint show through. I have to say I prefer the one on the left but that may be because I have a lot to learn about painting in photoshop. One thing that is hard after years of watercolor is thinking in terms of moving from dark to light instead of light to dark.

Continuing Photoshop adventures

I painted this in Photoshop after watching Will Terry's digital painting in photoshop videos, which you can buy here. I know that he would take the image much further, but I'm so excited by the process that I decided to post this now and then try working on it more later.

Illustration Friday - lesson

I chose to show a knitting lesson. This is the first piece I've colored with my new (bottom of the line) graphics tablet. It does feel a lot less clumsy than a mouse, but I still have a lot to learn about using photoshop. As a watercolorist my natural tendency is to build color in light layers but I want to learn other approaches.