A study

Ok, a study. It's always funny that when I first do the illustration, I really like it. Then I compare it to what I referenced and then I am like oh, that is much better. Hoot!

Thoughts going on in the background

So far, August is proving to be a slow month, so it's given me the chance to work on my comic work (beginning to pencil out my story of Artie and Merlo!). It's also given me some time to experiment a bit more.

First, the grayscale. I rarely work in black and white artwork anymore, and hardly ever work in grayscale. I decided to fix that a bit. I'm pretty happy with the two spot illustrations above. It gave me a chance to focus on value rather than color. Which is always important to keep in mind when composing images.

More importantly that I would love to pursue further in some sort of capacity is exploring shape and color. The color illustration is an example of that as well as this.

A comment I received from someone reviewing my portfolio recently said that while I can draw wonderfully and full of energy, I could focus more on my backgrounds. I was definitely aware of the lack of backgrounds in my work. This comes from my comic background. When I draw comics, I only need a few well placed lines to suggest outside or a single prop to suggest where the character is. Charles Schulz did that wonderfully.

To be fair, some picture book artists do just fine without drawing backgrounds. Mo Willems' pigeon books don't need a background one bit. Just flat color. When it comes to my picture books however, my ideas move beyond just simple characters filling up the page. So how to treat backgrounds?

Referring back to Charles Schulz and Peanuts, I am currently reading a book on the Peanuts animation specials and movies made by Bill Melendez and Lee Mendelson. It was eye-popping realizing that they had the same struggles of taking Schulz's strip and putting it onto the screen.

How do you take these simply drawn characters that have no background and expand that world onto the screen? They did it just fine. Take this sample shot. From a simple line drawing to a fully emotional scene. The background is simple and very graphic, but with a beautiful watercolor sky.

A screenshot from Snoopy, Come Home

Then while working on my comic, I thought of Chuck Jones' Looney Tunes cartoons and turned to Maurice Noble. As a kid and growing up, I've always loved Looney Tunes, but I have more of an affinity for Chuck Jones' shorts than Friz Freleng or Robert McKimson. Yes, his humor was always teetered sophisticated and completely absurd, but I think what pushed his work over the edge was thanks to Maurice Noble.

Just this sample background reflects the graphic nature of the cartoon characters. Bright colors, bold shapes. Just look at the line of direction!  This is just great design. And that's what great backgrounds should be. They should always be well designed to lead the reader's eye to where you want them to go. No element should be wasted.

PHEW! Many thoughts, but as I continue pushing my work, I continually think of these things.

NJSCBWI Showcase

I did not mention this yet. Last month, I participated in the New Jersey's annual SCBWI conference which I always love attending. The most rewarding thing from these weekends is connecting with many different creative minds from all over. It's great because every once in a while, I come out of the foxhole that is my workspace and get to talk shop with many different people. It humbles me to see all the talent that is congregated in one conference.

Along with a few other illustrators, I was given an award as the winner in the Best Unpublished Illustrator category! Below are the other illustrators whose work won, receieved honorable mentions, or I personally voted for in the Fan Favorite category. I consider myself lucky to be among these illustrators' work.

Vesper Stamper

Deborah Cuneo

Clare Lordon

 

 

Jason Kirschner

If you're interested in many more amazing illustrations from the conference, Kathy Temean's blog is filled to the brim with much amazing talent from the conference and beyond. I'm happy that I went.

Now, a doodle for people who hate naysayers.

Imbibing Alcohol and Sneezing Houses

Yes, who would ever think that alcohol and sneezing houses go so well together?

I received a great compliment about my work this past weekend at the NJSCBWI 2014 conference. Actually, many! A lot of compliments on my work (always exciting), but the one that I took a little certain pride in is making people look twice at my watercolors. They were surprised when I told them that they were not done digitally but good ol' fashioned watercolors! HA! That's right. I fooled them.

What are my secrets? A couple things:

1. Modern, smaller particle sized, watercolor paints

2. Use of a dispersant in the watercolor paint solution

(Note: this is the boring paragraph, and it's only of interest to people who like these tips in technique) First, paints with smaller particle sizes are preferable to the more traditional colors. When doing washes, the bigger particles in the traditional watercolor show up. Boooooo! This is especially true in cerulean blue, french ultramarine, and raw sienna washes. To get a smoother wash, go for the pathalos, quinacridones, hansa yellows, etc.

Second was a happy discovery to create the ultimate smooth wash. It's called alcohol. No, not drinking it. Incorporating a little bit of rubbing alcohol in a mixture of water and paint helps disperse the paint pigment. Like oil and water, alcohol repels water particles. With the addition of mixing rubbing alcohol, the alcohol prevents the particles in the paint to clump together and keeps the particles in suspension. This causes the paints to stay wet even longer on the paper, and keeps the wash even. As an example, the second snow scene is a redo. Even with Prussian Blue, a small particle paint, the wash wouldn't go evenly until I introduced the alcohol. HOORAY!

Lastly, I am exploring shapes in my work. The houses above are influenced by Dan Yaccarino's exciting shapes and colors. It'll take a bit more work, but I am happy where it's going.

Artie and Merlo

I continue coming back to Artie and Merlo a lot. For the day that I actually start this story as a graphic novel, I continue doing watercolors for situations that Artie and Merlo would find themselves.

Even since I began doing Artie and Merlo about 5 years ago (5 years!), some themes and situations I always find amusing and hilarious continually pop up:

1. Artie getting beat up or chased
2. Magic never working to his or Merlo's advantage
3. Wish fulfillment going wrong is always funny.

I write for them to see what I want to say, what I like, etc. The above examples illustrates a couple things that I like bouncing around in my head. Like if Wile E. Coyote were a knight and never got to defeat Artie or having a robot that shoots steam chasing Artie and Merlo around.

Lastly, a blast from the past.

Speech Bubbles

These are a good sampling of my work the past few weeks or so. I'd like to point out the speech bubbles in particular in the one illustration above. With a bit of hand lettering and photoshop magic, the bubbles themselves pop out which I like.

One of the great things of Photoshop is to be able to create these little tricks for illustration. Below is a Peter Brown illustration whom I continually look to for his great use of Photoshop.

The great thing about his work is that the use of Photoshop is seamless. It looks all hand painted, which is partly true (All the shapes and textures are scanned in, and then they're arranged and colored on Photoshop), but it doesn't look like photoshop which I love (the colors too aren't that cold computer look!). If I was to venture into more Photoshop, this is what I'd work towards.

Illustrations and Charlie Brown

 

So on my continuous quest to become a children's book illustrator, I have hit more road bumps than I care to count. Tackling writing, trying to make my artwork as best as possible, and having working relationships with different industry professionals over the past four years is daunting. I often ask myself why I continue pursuing this goal at the cost of time, family, and other career pursuits. I certainly love to draw, I want to draw for a living, but at what point does it seem ridiculous?

This thinking reminded me of Charlie Brown trying to kick the football from Lucy and it gave me some new insight. The obvious thought is I feel like Charlie Brown. Whenever I think that I will get a break, it's snatched away from me, just like Charlie Brown. It's obvious to us too, the reader, that no matter what happens, no matter what promises Lucy makes, we know that Charlie Brown trying to kick that football is futile. It's never going to happen.

Maybe other people had this thought about my illustration career too, being lookers from the outside. The reality is that I don't know if I will ever get to accomplish my goals. Just like Charlie Brown, maybe, just maybe, THIS TIME, I will kick the football. So I don't know like the reader would.

But ALSO, who is to say that we are the reader? As readers of Charlie Brown's plight, we know what will happen before it happens. We know that Lucy will pull away the ball, and repeat this same joke over and over again. But we're not an omniscient reader of life. We don't know what will happen next. So while it seems that I keep on kicking at vanishing air, maybe, just maybe, one day I will kick the football.

So I carry on with lots of hope driving me.

King of the Jungle

A new idea that I am working on. The story came so naturally!

Flat Washes

I've been practicing a lot (even though this blog doesn't show it!). What have I been practicing? Good question. Flat washes, solid color, bright color. Bold shapes. A couple of these illustrations are examples of me working on getting rich even color. Hope you like!

Solocom NYC

It's been a while since I have posted anything. As much as I want to do art all day, I still have to write, edit, and sketch a lot before the illustrations make it to the light of day.

So here is some new work!

So a weekend and a half ago, I went to Solocom, the first comedy festival here in NYC featuring all these comedic performers performing solo acts for the first time ever! A lot of firsts. Along with these firsts are a number of illustrations that I am doing for Solocom. Which are a lot of fun to do and I hope that they are fun. They're here on Facebook, and also on Tumblr, which is pretty neat.