setting realistic goals to improve as an illustrator

My husband is not into 'New Year's Resolutions', but I LOVE them! I love evaluating the past year, what I accomplished, what I wished I had accomplished but didn't, and I really love thinking about the upcoming year and what I can tweak to become better....in all facets of life. But this year I have some lofty goals to take me further down this road of illustration.


Tonight I came across this great post on "Once Upon a Sketch" where Jennifer Zivoin shares some GREAT wisdom on setting realistic goals as we seek to improve both our abilities and our business.

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!!

Merry Christmas

a snowy standoff

flour sacks

Lately I have been seeing a number of animated flour sacks - an exercise in learning to create movement and emotion in a character. This is something that I struggle with, so tonight I did a little searching for some inspiration and images of what to work toward.

There is a great collection of images and videos posted by Stuart Lees Tait here.




And from other blogs...

Scribble Junkies

" It really is an effective thing to practice drawing with. The bag of flour exudes weight, shape, volume, and even texture! (I told my students to add stitching in the front to further help in defining the form), but is also a very simple shape which anyone can draw." - from Scribble Junkies

Animator Island

DeviantArt - heylorlass

Just found a link to this very informative blog post on the origins of the flour sack exercise and what it's real purpose was - a very interesting must read! Here's a small quote from it:
"So the primary reason for the half-filled flour sack is as a simplified learning platform for understanding natural deformations in movement and dealing with the inherent limitations. The additional imparting of character, personality and emotions to the flour sack is a secondary part of the exercise that evolved later. All too often animation students are introduced to this exercise as a lesson in learning to develop and show character and emotions in a simple object and don’t truly understand the primary value of the exercise. The poor misunderstood little flour sack gets a quick pass as a simple and pathetic little character and is often overlooked as a real training ground for understanding forces, deformation, and fundamental organic movement." 
Read the rest of the post here.

It's a busy season!

It's a busy season - yes Christmas is just a month away, and that makes it doubly busy and exciting. But I am refering to both PiBoIdMo, SkADaMo happening this month and starting in January another favorite - PB Dummy Challenge which sounds like it will run similarly to how we did the Unofficial PB Dummy Challenge last year.

This morning on the PBDummy Crit FB page, Diandra Mae posted a great link to "3 Ways to Pace your Picture Book", which had links to some other very helpful posts for writers and illustrators, including "How to format a manuscript" - all great info I am going to need in the near future. So this is me, just leaving a few bread crumbs for myself and hopefully leading some other readers along the path, making it a little simpler for them as well.

(ps. Another little facinating gem was a link to a post about Sendak's PB Dummy which later turned into "Where the Wild Things Are"...and wow was the first dummy different from the end product!)

PiBoIdMo 2013

And here we go! Another month of PiBoIdMo. I really do love these online challenges. Last year PiBoIdMo was such a great experience for me. At the end of the month I had 30 ideas, two that I LOVE! and 28 others that with time and a little tweaking may lead to other great stories. And I don't even consider myself a writer!  But these are all great stories to feed my illustrations.


So thank you Tara Lazar for leading us once again for another 30 days, and for the wonderful line-up of bloggers who will inspire us from day to day.

Happy Halloween

Photoshop Power Day

I just invested $75 in Will Terry's Photoshop Power Day earlier this week and I can't get enough of it! Five GREAT illustrators are giving their tips and tricks, things that they use regularly in creating their work. So definitely check it out if you are a beginner - intermediate Photoshop user. It's currently 25% off, the price jumps Nov.1

Here's a piece I just worked on this afternoon after watching Jake Parker's instruction earlier this week...

I started by scanning in a old sketch from a few years ago...

Then followed Jake's steps and within a couple hours, voila!

Thank you Mr. Jake Parker and Will Terry!

Learning about textures

It's late, but I just wanted to give kudos to Hibbary at Deviant art for the great textures and tutorial for using textures. There are some great ideas here, it's worth checking out.