getting back into the groove

I have been a real slacker on my blog this month...well I can't honestly say I've ever been very consistent. But I was listening to an interview yesterday on CBC where it was said that consistent writing makes you a far better communicator in general, and I could use some help!  At 42 I'm feeling like dementia is setting in already - words constantly escape me. Some say it's just mother's brain, and I hope they are right!!  But perhaps writing will help too.

I continue to find great little tidbits online that would be so helpful to go back to regularly as I educate myself in writing and illustration. This morning my surfing lead me to Brian Lies' blog where he focuses on sharing his characters and his process...really neat work!!

An evening of fun and inspiration

Every once in a while if we put ourselves out there we encounter amazing opportunities to grow and to be inspired.

A number of months ago I was surfing the web, reading blogs of successful local illustrators. I came across this photo - it's a picture of the first inaugural 'sketch club' at Mike Kerr and Renata Liwska's new art studio, whose name is "sketch club" - how cool is that?   In attendance at this inaugural sketch club evening were five illustrators, Renata and Mike along with Carolyn Fisher, Jacqueline Hudon-Verrelli and Byron Eggenschwiler - all of them successful illustrators.  Additionally, Renata, Carolyn and Jacqueline are published children's book illustrators. I had crossed paths  previously with many of these fine artists- Carolyn and Jacqueline were former instructors of mine at ACAD years ago and Renata and Mike were guest speakers during those classes.  So, when I saw this image I couldn't help think to myself, "How does one get invited to a sketch club night??!!"

Apparently, all one must do is ask. I later summoned the courage to email Mike and express my interest in attending a sketch club night and guess what? Last week I got an invite.

What a fun evening! I was certainly out of my element being an amateur among these professional illustrators, but they were all so welcoming and encouraging. It was a similar group to the first sketch club - Renata, Mike, Carolyn and Byron. We sketched for 3 1/2 hours until I had numb bum (there is some physical training involved in drawing for hours, who knew?) and  had to excuse myself to get home and pack as my family was leaving for a 5 day vacation the next morning and I hadn't started the packing process yet.

I left sketch club on a high that has lasted all 5 days of our family vacation, and learned a bunch of priceless nuggets from the experiences they shared.  All in all an absolutely neat experience to spend an evening among illustrators. 

Tomorrow is the big day!

Tomorrow we start day one of our challenge. Are you excited?? I am!  To start us off I thought we needed a badge. So if you like badges like I do, please feel free to snag this one and post it to your blog.

See ya back here tomorrow!

Manga hair

Hair has always been a challenge for me to draw. I seem myself getting better as I practice, and Matt from DTO has some great tutorials that have given me some insights into how to draw hair more realistically. But for those times when I want to draw realistic hair that is a little more 'cartoony' I seem to gravitate toward Manga hair.  Here is a great tutorial by Mark Crilley on drawing Manga hair that I watched today.

Character Design Exercise

One of my favorite character designers is Peter deSeve - how can you not!  Recently I took out a compilation of his character designs from the library, both me and my children looked through his sketches over and over.
I think that coming up with creative characters are so challenging. I suppose it comes with practice, but to really think outside of the box is even more of a challenge.On that note, today I came upon a post with an amazing idea to do exactly that - think outside the box and create unique characters.  Here is the exercise ! Thanks to Letters From Schwarzville for posting!...note not only is this a great exercise for illustrators, I think it would be a fun challenge for grade school kids. Heck, I'm going to save this for a fun rainy day activity from my children.

Session 8 & 9

For my "Marks and Splashes" course, this week I was working on research - a scavenger hunt of sorts to find reference images and videos for our book (Amy's words, my illos). What a fun exercise this was! The next image that I am going to work on is for the page that will read "pesky, scary mice". I have had the image for this page in my head for a long time, but have never collected reference photos for it. I was looking online - Google-ing and scrolling through Pinterest (how lucky we are as illustrators now with the internet and thousands of images at our disposal in seconds), and then I thought why not set up a still life of this image in my head rather than looking through tons of photos? So I went to the one room in the house that has the door opening the right way and set up various items, used a flashlight to get the shadows I needed, got my boys helping me, one as a model, one holding the door and one as a cheerleader (although he did let me borrow one of his "Pet Shop" character which was the stand in for the mouse in our story). It was such a fun exercise to do and I think I'll enjoy drawing the image all the more since it's more personal with our familiar household items in it.

Session 9 was a review on perspective. Not very long I ago I did a few chapters on perspective with Matt an instructor at SVA in NYC and creator of the online drawing class DTO (highly worth investing in by the way!), but good to address perspective again and take the opportunity to consider composition and value at the same time...there is so much to think about when creating an image that work!...My next thing about perspective to master = to throw a character into the perspective mix (scene/person/animal/action all working together)

I am feeling a bit like a illustration junkie - trying to take advantage of and collecting all the learning I can. This week I was trying to win a copy of Will Terry's 6 video session on designing an image. I was so diligent checking his blog multiple times a day, but the one night I got sucked into working on our family blog I missed the window of opportunity! Oh well, I have heard such great things about his class too, that will be my next investment...thank goodness I have a supportive and patient husband. :)

Session 7 - Opening the Palette

Last week I felt really constrained sticking to two colors, but this week when I had four colors to work with, yikes! I was wishing for just two.

I'm not as happy with this painting as the first, especially the grass, but it was a great exercise.

Session 6 - Two color watercolor study

Helga P has inspired me to get going on my homework for our online class How To Be A Children's Book Illustrator. So thanks Helga! Here is my homework for this week. I am going to try and keep up with Helga who is apparently very dedicated to getting her assignments done weekly.

Painting an image using only two colors was a fun exercise. I loved the process of mixing the two colors to get the color and the tone I needed.

sketches

It's been a long time since I have posted some of my 'homework' from Drawing Tutorials Online, so here are a few recent sketches...







In the evening so as not to completely waste my time watching 'Dancing with the Stars', I have been doodling and working on some little characters. Here are a few of my favorites.