My Christmas Wish List #1: "Make Your Marks And Splashes Course"

MY CHRISTMAS WISH LIST # 1

Okay, I've thought about it long enough and I'm starting on my Christmas Wish List. It's a bit late, but most of the things on this list will (hopefully) be things you can still get before Christmas!

I absolutely love Mark Mitchell's newsletter for artists. I have learned so much from his newsletter and his blog. I have a few of the posts saved and refer back to them often. If you go to his website check out the post 'Charging' up Your Watercolor. It just changed my life! You can help me with the number 1 thing on my Christmas list by signing up for the class yourself here: https://marksandsplasheslearning.thrivecart.com/make-your-marks-and-splashes/?affiliate=daniduck

Here are  reasons this children's illustration course is #1 on my Christmas list this year!


1. FREE INFO 

Mark gives out great information free on his website. No purchase necessary or expected. People who freely tell you useful information

2. EXPERIENCE

Mark is an experienced illustrator. He has illustrated over 20 books (20 from other authors, 3 he wrote himself and tons of magazines. This experience gives those who take

3. COURSE OFFERINGS

Everything is covered in this course from design and color to how to market your work!

4. ART COMMUNITY

There is nothing better for being creative than joining a good community of artists. I have tried creating art in a vacuum and my art suffered greatly for this. I have found being part of a good creative group is essential to being a great artist!

5. EASY PAYMENT

The cost of the course is really inexpensive for an all inclusive course. It's only $249! If you can't afford that much at once you can do a payment plan. My favorite thing is that you can use Paypal to pay. I love finding any excuse NOT to use my credit cards.


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Still not sure? Here is a preview of some of the things you'll be learning. Sign up to his FREE news letter and you'll receive 4 short videos and a .PDF lesson! http://howtobeachildrensbookillustrator.com/drawingsecret/


Things are tight this year. If you join the course using my affiliate link I'll be able to afford to take the class with you! Let me know if you are taking the class and I'll give you some extra bonus help and motivation!

If you use my affiliate link here: https://marksandsplasheslearning.thrivecart.com/make-your-marks-and-splashes/?affiliate=daniduck

Day 22 of the 30 in 30

Here is a bunny! I don't know if he's cuter than my other bunny, but he's more purple. Purpler bunnies are slightly superior in many ways. Well one way and that way may or may not be color. Spoiler: it's color.

This paintings is for two challenges: #30paintingsin30days and #kidlitart28  Leslie's site for the 30 in 30: https://www.saetastudio.com/february-30-in-30-blog  This image is 2.5"x3.5" colored with Daniel Smith watercolors, inked with a pentel brush pen on Arches Watercolor Paper.  

Process Post

 I put all of this up on Instagram as I was working on it, but personally I think it's kind of neat to see the process of a painting all together in one place.

This is the the first full sketch I did for this illustration. I think I have some roughs somewhere, but those are even worse than this. 

Here is the full final sketch I created before I went into colors.

I had a lot of trouble with the paper I used. The color was not soaking in and not working right in general! I did get the paper replaced by the company but it was a lot of work to do to start over.

I traced the image and started over. When I trace my own work I'm not just tracing. I actually make an effort to change things. Some things I will erase and change completely after moving them to tracing paper.

Here is the drawing on the paper. I transferred it by using a burnt umber pigment on the back of my tracing paper (this can be done with crushed graphite as well). The drawing I did looks lovely right down to the erased bits I forgot to brush away. 

I had to go over some of the lines with graphite because I couldn't see the lines Usually I don't need to do this. Before I started painting I put down some masking fluid.

At this point I have a lot of paint on the paper, but I'm not happy with the shadowing at this point so I had to go in later to adjust everything.

This is what the final illustration looked like before I added inks. I'm not as happy as I could be about the clothing, but overall I like it.

I've been told that I should try leaving out the inks, but I think I would miss them too much. I love how different an image looks when it's complete. I'm noticing just now that maybe the colors could be adjusted to see to show off the wings a bit better, but other than that I'm happy with how this turned out. 

I don't have a title for this painting yet, so if you have any suggestions visit my Instagram page and give me a suggestion for a title!

The Magic Mask Process

I'm going to put up some process photos so that I can show you some of what you might go through while you are working on your dummy. These are illustrations I did last year for the book "The Magic Mask" by Pamela Stadyk.  I'm going to show you the progression of images of three of my illustrations.

Thumbnails

More Thumbnails

 My thumbnail work is really quite crude. Some of what I have here is stuff only I can understand.

Facial Expressions

More Facial Expressions

Character Design

 You'll see by this point that I didn't do as much prep work as I should have. This caused a bit of trouble later because I wasn't as quick finishing up all my images.

A completely terrible start on Jade, but the dolphin is much like the final mammal.

This is very close to the final image here. I hated the positioning of Jade's legs. Also I think I made a few changes to the furniture.

This illustration was probably the most challenging. Trying to get Jade just have her head underwater was difficult. I played with several different angles before I got the right one.

I think of all the images this one changed the least throughout the whole process.

 After I had finished the images at this size I found out the size of the images were wrong and had to adjust all the images.

These are the final images at the time I sent them to Pamela. They weren't quite right. Part of the problem was a mistake I didn't catch. The characters needed auras in some of the illustrations. Thank goodness for digital illustration! I was able to edit the photos to Pamela's liking without having to redraw/paint them all.  

These are the final illustrations as they appear in the book!

It was a long process to get these illustrations from idea to physical illustrations. There were 8 illustration in all. The entire process took 2 months (I think exactly 2 months) Since I was commissioned by the author to do these illustrations there was a lot of back and forth that needed to be done. I'm happy with how the illustrations turned out, and learned a lot in the process.

You can see that I started out with pretty poor drawings. Don't feel bad if yours are bad too. You can end up with a polished book if you work hard!

The Magic Mask

At the end of last year I was commissioned to do some illustrations for Pamela Stadnyk's book "The Magic Mask". This story follows Jade in a magical undersea adventure. It is a lovely storybook with amazing illustrations. (What, I'm not biased!)

I loved this commission because I got to work with an underwater theme and I love creating underwater art! I selected for you a few of the illustrations that you will see in the book. You can pick up Pamela's book here. While I do not get commission for this book I do encourage you to buy this so that I can work with Pamela on her next book! 

 

A Baby Dragon Illustration!

I didn't get a chance to do an interview for this week. I thought I'd share an illustration that I did back in September. This painting is entitled: "The Journey".  The original was done in watercolor and ink. I'm not sure why I haven't shared it yet, but here it is!

The "Bad" Picture Book Blog Hop! - Day 1

Today marks the first day of The "Bad" Picture Book Blog Hop! "Bad" as in Picture books that were created in High School or before. This blog hop is just for fun and giggles. I am the organizer of this blog hop and will keep you up to date each day as to where to go next!

Here is the list as it stands right now:

Feb 9  - Dani Duck http://daniduckart.blogspot.ca/
Feb 10- Becky Fyfe http://imaginecreatewrite.blogspot.ca/
Feb 11- Marcie Colleen http://writeroutine.blogspot.com
Feb 12- Mandy Yates http://www.childrensbookacademy.com/mondays-with-mandy-or-mira
Feb 13- Sylvia Liu www.sylvialiuland.com

Feb 16 Rachel Elizabeth Cole http://www.rachelelizabethcole.com/
Feb 17 Annina Wildermuth https://allmycharacters.wordpress.com/
Feb 18 Teresa MI Schaefer http://www.teresamischaefer.com/#!blog/c66p

Here is my book in it's entirety! This was done by me in the 9th grade. The title is "Pewe's Wonderful Adventure" I laugh every time I read this story. Many of the characters were drawn from comic book characters. Some of my reference drawings were less reference and more literal. I believe the first picture was taken directly out of a book with a few additions (which is not something I would do today).

This story was typed and then cut and pasted to the book. It had a cardstock cover with the cover illustration affixed to it. The cover was bound by buttons and wire (my mom's idea) and the pages were put into plastic inserts. 

There were so many mistakes in this book so I welcome you to find them all. I had a kitten that looked like the kitten in the book, so I used her for reference. She was a tortoiseshell cat, so she could not be male. On to the book!