Puppet show colored

I put all the illustrations together on one page. You can click on it to make it bigger.

Puppet Show

The kids think it's very funny when the puppet won't let go his hand.

But this puppet in a bit too realistic...

In fact let's get out of here!

At the fair

Family Day at the museum was yesterday and provided me with enough ideas for at least a week's worth of drawings.

Illustration Friday - midsummer night

This is an older piece that I originally did for a calendar. It's a mixture of watercolor and watercolor pencil. Some of the texture in the grass is made by physically scoring the paper so that the color already in place in the grooves isn't affected by more colored pencil on top. Here's a close up.

What's that noise?

And here it is in color.

What's that noise?

Watercolor Wednesdays have started having illustration prompts again and today's is "What's that noise?" So here's a variation on the monster in the closet. Now to color it.

A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed

A Friend in Need

This has been a busy day so this is as far as I got with my latest mini story. I'll color it tomorrow.

Illustration Friday - launch

Three...two...one... I'm not sure what type of vehicle this is or where they're going, but they know and I'm sure they'll get there.

Colored

Mini story number 2

I'm not sure which recess in my brain this one came from, but I'll color it tomorrow.

Mini story, colored

And here it is colored. Although my reader here is a boy, there's a lot of me in him. I wore glasses, got lost in a world of books, and had younger siblings - though neither of them played the violin.

Mini story

This weekend I went to an SCBWI conference in Fishkill, NY, where I had a critique from an art director. One thing she encouraged me to do was to tell stories in my portfolio by showing a series in which the same characters interact. This is my first attempt. I'll color it tomorrow. You can click on the image to enlarge it but the writing says, "When Anthony was reading a good book, almost nothing could distract him."

Illustration Friday - swept

Just a quick response to the Illustration Friday prompt this time. I was sketching the three hair styles when my cat sat down beside me (hence the funny from-above perspective), started grooming herself and became the fourth image.

New work from old?

No new work today as I've been doing more knitting illustrations, but one new idea. Since I started an online card shop (here) I've been wondering about whether I have old work that could be re-purposed and I thought of this collage of birches. Here it is below in a different incarnation. There's an approval process that takes a couple of weeks, but eventually this should show up in my card shop.

Back to school - colored

This is as far I've got with coloring the pencil drawing I posted before. I think it probably still needs some more work - it feels as though not all areas are equally realized - but I'm at the stage where work slows down and the decisions become harder...

Illustration Friday - shadows

Another pencil drawing colored digitally. What will they meet at the end of the passage? I think this pair is braver than I am.
My first thought when I saw the word "shadows" was of Peter Pan dancing and crowing to have his shadow back and since we had a copy of the story illustrated by Alice Woodward when I was young this is the picture I saw in my head - at least this is the best image I could find of it on the web.

Pear

I don't have any new work today, but in honor of the fact that I just sold a print of this, I'm posting this watercolor of a pear.

Back to School already?

I came up with two possible ideas for cover art for the back to school issue of Stories for Children magazine and this is the one that wasn't chosen. At some point I'll probably work it up into a finished piece, but here's the drawing for now.

Another scene

This isn't quite finished but since I didn't post anything yesterday - I was busy doing knitting illustrations - I wanted to put it up.