THE BLOG
Enjoy
Here is a you tube movie I made for my picture book idea “Kiss, Cuddle, Tuck. Enjoy:
From Sketch to Finish
First comes the sketch, a moment in time, captured in my sketch book.
This little girl needed a teddy bear to add a little something to the illustration.
I like to get the details the way I want them on tracing paper and then transfer that to the watercolor paper with graphite paper I create with a pencil and tracing paper.
Even though my paper is 300 lb., I staple it to a board. That helps keep the paper from warping with the water and also keeps it on the board if I want to paint at an angle.
At this point I think about what colors I would like to use. I like to limit my palette to a few colors to help harmonize the colors. I’m going to try a double analogous.
You have to jump right into putting paint on paper. The white blank paper can be intimidating so diving in is the best.
Sometimes I will make a color study. Other times I will think a bit more and let the colors happen. This can be very fun if the painting turns out. Otherwise…..not so fun.
I like to put some details into the illustration with a pencil. The trick is to keep the line fresh and spontaneous. The line needs to look like you are having fun and sure of yourself.
When you think you have your illustration finished, you can take a look at it in the mirror to see if anything else needs to be added. You can also take the color out to see how your values are.
Watercolor Retreat
What’s not to like? A week in the Uintah Mountains painting watercolors with good friends. It was a chance to really concentrate and get some painting done. The painting was interrupted only to eat some fine food and take a walk in the fresh mountain air. There was artistic synergism in the air. Paint was flying from palette to paper.
It was time to paint the little woman I met on the road through Zion National Park last November. We drove around a corner and there she was. I knew immediately I wanted to paint her.
She was overcome by the beauty and spirit of the place and trying to capture it with her camera. She had lived in New Jersey and had now moved to Israel. Her eyes filled with tears as she talked about the beauty of this place. I felt an immediate connection as her soul felt the same love for the place that I did. How do you capture those majestic sandstone cliffs and the feeling she had as she looked at them. “Epiphany on the Road to Zion” is my attempt.
Making pictures out of words
As a children’s book illustrator, you never know what you’ll be drawing next, but a bull on a bicycle? Is that even possible? Bicycles are one of the hardest things to draw but to put a bull on a bicycle? That’s even harder. Will he wear biking gloves? Will he ride a clip in pedal or a pedal with a strap. Some details are in the manuscript but a lot is left up to the picture you see in your head. The illustrator has to read the words and then make the pictures believable. That is the fun thing about making pictures out of words. You read the words and create a world that will go with the story. All things are possible for the children’s book illustrator just as all things are possible for the child reading the story. How do you draw a bicycle? Like I tell my students, “Go look at a bicycle and draw the shapes.” It’s that simple. Where do you get an image of a bull on a bicycle? Maybe that’s why I don’t sleep at night. It’s all in my head like the pigs, running amuck.
Peaceful, Pastoral Settings
Last Saturday I headed up to Park City to join the Utah Watercolor Society Paint Out. The location was off the main road, up a private lane to a pastoral setting with a great red barn. The time was evening just as the sun dropped down behind the mountains to the west. The color was great.
Everyone chose their spot. I set up right by a fence where I could look through the wood slats at a beautiful pasture with the cows in the distance and a couple of great trees in the middle of the field. I set up my chair, got out my paints, filled up my water container and started applying paint to paper. You get a different feel when you are plein-airing and that feeling ends up in your painting.
I was making great progress, look out at the scene, back at my paper, out at the scene. Do you know that feeling that crawls up your spine, something is slowly creeping up on you? Look at your paper, they are far away.
Look up and cows. They crowded around the fence and blocked my entire view. Then they started snorting which is just what you want when you’re painting with a water soluble paint.
After two hours the artists got together and set up our paintings to check them out. I did not finish the painting…..
but what I did finish has a great feeling of livestock and some nice spots of texture. You should MOOOOOVE on out and give plein-air painting a try. I’ll post the completed painting when I’ve finished scrapeing off the texture.