All together now...

All together now... I redrew the zoo background this morning, using an older file I had drawn about 7 years ago.

I think my favorite discovery with this piece was adding the sky and clouds. I used an older clouds file from another painting. That's one reason I love photoshop so much... you don't have to reinvent the wheel every day.

No doubt I'll continue to change the colors saturation levels and other details. But it's just about finished now...

:0)

Learned from ancient druids of yore

 The color is added... with many, many photoshop techniques learned from ancient druids of yore and passed down from member to member in secret societies.

I was trying for a flat sort of color quality like a Japanese print. It will no doubt be changed again and again before I'm done.

That's part of earning membership privileges in the subterranean society... doing things over and over and over.

It begins with the sketch...

 

It begins with the sketch... which is first changed about 77 times depending on what effect the artist is looking to achieve.

In this case it was trial and error that went on for more than a day.

Le Petit Chef...

A little experimental doodling. It's amazing how closely vintage styles match today's photoshop toolset.

Extraordinary pancakes of the world..

Extraordinary pancakes of the world... unite!  Righto!  No, this is not a world revolution, it's merely an experiment in new styles based on vintage advertizing. 

It's amazing how well photoshop lends itself to the airbrushed styles of yesteryear.

As simple as A - B - C

 This is the title page from my book 'Cromwell Dixon's Sky-Cycle'.

First comes the idea & inspiration. Then the design -
which often can be more design than drawing.

Next the drawing is refined.

Finally the painting with watercolors on real paper... which is followed by the scanning & final photoshop reworking.

As simple as A - B - C.

Crumbly line...

Speaking of line quality... I just fell in love with this crumbly line that I discovered in my studio one day. It's from my book 'The Dancing Clock'. 

Maybe lines are kind of like coffee-cake. So the really good ones are all crumbly?

And like coffee-cakes, crumbly lines aren't all that hard to make.

Owl-a-Minx is indispensable

It's Owl-a-Minx time again on the shores of the Blue Lagoon.

What is Owl-a-Minx? Owl-a-Minx is indispensable!  Not to be confused with Owl-a-Winx.

The difficulty in making a choice!

Here's an example of how many variations on a page element an artist might try. Of course digital art makes changes easy... but the flip-side of that freedom is the difficulty in making a choice!

It's fun to watch the movie and see the images change... and picking a new 'favorite'.

A pastoral scene from a new book...

Here's a scene from a new book... lots of nice pastoral scenes.
I guess it'll be released some day... don't know when.
Artists are always the last to know anything.

I suppose when you're a ghost it doesn't matter much... lol!
I think it'd be nice to drift through life like a ghost, don't you?

I quite enjoyed painting it in real paints on real paper.  A nice challenge.  It was finished off with photoshop, of course.

A super school visit...

I had a marvelous time doing a school visit at the Norman Rockwell School in Redmond.  It was lots of fun being able to run my movies and slideshows off the giant 'smart screen' bulletin boards they have.

I got lost trying to find the location.  I finally found a gas station, where no one had ever heard of the school or the street and no one even knew where the main arterial was.  And they all live there!

But the classes were a big hit.  So much fun!  I made up about 8 movies and 3 Powerpoint slideshows, one of them with a geography quiz about Washington State - from my new book about Washington.

It's funny how each class is like a different audience... laughing at different spots in the 'material.

One of my teachers at the Parsons School of Design was Peter Rockwell... (or maybe it was David).  He was a classy old duffer with a pork pie hat and a quiet studious manner.  I think it could be fun to be a teacher.  It certainly is a nice change of pace to get out of the studio.

Long live Mickey & Max!

Long live Mickey & Max!

I got to spend my only quarter at Parsons in Maurice's class. Looking back, it was probably the high point of my little career as a book illustrator, in the sense that I got to be amongst giants.

I remember being so nervous showing Maurice my work.  I showed him my two dummy books I'd done to date. He liked the one about Dr. Dabbleduck, the hamster who wanted everyone to eat pancakes three times a day. I was nervous... he said, "Relax, I'm just an old man with a beard".  I remember being struck by the 'rich' language... well salted with choice explicatives. 

Another time the class got a sneak peek at the pencil dummy to 'Outside Over There'. It was exquisite.  I said 'It looks like an opera!', which Maurice really liked, since he was so obsessed with Mozart and music.  It was raining cats & dogs so I lent Maurice a plastic bag to safeguard the original pencils (which are probably worth about $300k no doubt). All his art goes directly to the Rosenburg museum in Philadelphia.

Maurice was thrilled when I told him I was dropping out of art school (already after just 1 quarter) and had already started freelancing. He was always very helpful giving his students names of editors to call and generally helping with real life problems that none of the other teachers ever bothered with. 

My regret is that I had a mid-term final on the one day Maurice invited some of us to lunch. I should have gone.
Maurice certainly made my life a richer one... in spirit.

I blogged about it all years ago...