Lion and Mouse Thursday update

Ahhh!! I am done! 

Well, so far anyway! LOL! Now I have to submit this to a few forums and critique groups and get some input from the online illustrator population. But here are the final few steps in this items creation. I'll try to be brief and to the point. I tend to be longwinded, (which of course you've noticed.)

On Monday I did like I said I would and focussed on finding reference for the mouse. An African Striped Back mouse to be more precise. Don't you just love the internet for reference! Upon finding image that showed me what I needed to see of the mouse I copied those files into Photoshop and put them all on their own layer. I then made another layer and started sketching the mouse out. I decided to keep the mouse in roughly the same pose as before, hopefully this time a lot closer to being anatomically correct! And also hopefully this time with a little more character and personality to really capture the intent of this moment in the story.


On Tuesday I started to fill in the colors of the mouse. And lay down shadow tones and  shading to help ground him.  I spend a lot of time adjust the mouses size. His height and plumpness bugged me from the previous day. So I slimmed him down a good deal and adjusted his positioning. I thought I was done with that part but found out I was very wrong! You will note that in later images his size and weight still change some more as I go on.
Wednesday, I feel safe to start going in and working tight on this piece. This is definitely a benefit of working digitally at a decent DPI. The ability to really zoom in and get as much detail as you could possibly want. I have learned that when I want large sweeping strokes I zoom out and use large brushes and the opposite for detailed portions. But it's important to zoom out to 100% (actual) size. To make sure that the level of detail you are executing is worthwhile. In many instances you will spend a lot of time on details barely noticeable at normal size. So be wary!


Thursday it looks like I will actually get to finish this up! I go in and finish out the details of the mouse. Who with those stripes looks like the child of a mixed mouse and chipmunk marriage! I really enjoyed doing the fur on the mouse! Good times! Once done with the mouse I use the Adjustment tools to make color corrections to the mouse. Removing a lot of the yellow because he wasn't standing out at all. He was getting lost in the image. Even with this adjustment I end up placing a lighter color silhouette around a part of him to help him stand out from the background. AFter adjusting his color, I apply an adjustment filter to the entire image. Enhancing the Saturation slightly and deepening my shadows and pulling out  more of the highlights of the image.  And I call it a day! Yahoo all done for now!! But there is one thing left to do....

How strong and brave was the mouse to offer his kindness to the upset lion.

I still have the original image in the Photoshop file on it's own layer. I move it to the top and spend a while turning it on and off. Looking at the image from 13 years ago and comparing it to the one I've just finished. This is what a difference 13 years makes. I consider myself lucky that there is any difference! I know many folks who haven't grown or changed in style at all in the years since college.  

I can see some elements in both that I like, some elements that existed in that young person fresh from college are evident in the image. While now it's obvious that I have changed a great deal. It's still me, you can still see my hand in what I do. But you can definitely see change. Whether people would consider it growth or not is a completely different thing. But I like what I see and I am proud of the difference. It lets me know that I am going in the right direction, my direction. So I got a lot more out of this than I'd hoped. And it's renewed that ember of confidence that a lot of artists struggle with. Now all I have to do is keep it lit!

Enjoy your weekend!!!

-Wilson

Wisdom Wednesday

This whole week I've been trying to find more and more places to show my work. From what I've learned you have to get your stuff out there and in as many places as possible. The more it's out there, the more likely it will get seen by others. You never know who may come across you and need your services. I'm still researching the best places and I'll let everyone know when I find them and what they are. But for today I'll highlight the places that you can showcase your artwork as well as get input from fellow artists and potentially art directors as well. Forums.

I'll highlight two in particular that are fairly popular and see a decent amount of traffic. High traffic is good because it means that many more people will see what you are working on.



The first one is The Drawing Board. These forums are largely populated by student artists and professional Illustrators looking to get input and hopefully praise on what they are posting. I most often gravitate to the Illustration forum, but there are also forums for Life Drawing, Sketches, Caricature, Superheroes, Comics, Photography as well as many others. This site is great for networking and getting inspiration from the many talented folks that populate it.



Only thou of thick skin need enter here! Next up is not for the faint of heart! LOL! So often you post images hoping to get good feedback, insight and criticism. (Well I do anyways.) And sometimes in an effort to not hurt your feelings or ego people say nothing or only tell you that your image is great. This is not those people! These guys are dedicated artists who take what they do seriously and expect the same from you. I mean, how else are you to grow and get better if the flaws in your work are never pointed out?

If this is you and you are READY to get your Ego stomped on and thrown out the window, then Satellite Soda is definitely the place for you. These folks put the BRUTAL in Brutal Honesty. I've seen instances where someone getting too much praise is actually frowned upon. This group of folks want to bring out your best with some real tough love. Their Forums are limited to, Art Finished, Art Unfinished, Talk Art and Talk General. Straight to the point no filler.

I know I make it sound terrible! But I get butterflies thinking about posting in their forums. (Which is probably why I haven't done it in a while!) I know that they will give me a true and honest opinion about what I am doing right and what needs to be improved upon. Encouraging me throughout the process. Frequent visits here, a thick skin and persistance can only result in better artwork coming from your fingertips! Enjoy...if you dare!! :)

-Wilson

Lion and Mouse Friday Update

Woo!! Another Friday so soon!! LOL! I only got to work on this for three days this week. I was sick on Monday and Tuesday, food poisoning. (Don't ask and I won't tell!)

After drawing the lion in with more detail it was time to flesh him out a bit. Start filling in information and get him blocked in fairly well. You "SHOULD" work the entire image at the same time. Make sure that all the elements work well against one another. Determine your light source and lock down your forms in a fairly 3-dimensional way. Well, sometimes I do that, sometimes I don't. My instinct is not to. To just jump into an illustration and paint what I have the strongest urge to first. Which honestly creates a lot of problems later on because you tend to work on the elements you are comfortable with and leave what you think are hard parts for later. (Achemm...notice strong continued absence of mouse in image!)
In situations where I know my enthusiasm will surpass common sense, I at the very least force myself to work from back to front. Which lets me incorporate the background into the mid ground, the mid ground into the foreground and so on and so forth. I'm sure that much is apparent from the process steps you see in these posts. I hope so anyway!

On Thursday I'm still nailing down things and blocking in forms. I'm also trying to remember elements of the first lion that I liked and want to definitely include on this image. The dark streak in his Elvis-like Pompadour was a definite keeper. My Lion is definitely styled by Vidal Sassoon! Lots of hairspray for his majesty! Mroowwwrr!! LOL! I also want to make sure that I am pulling a lot of pinks from the background into his skin and hair. The Mucha hair tribute wasn't something I thought I would be keeping. But for giggles I put it in. Right now I worry about it flattening the lion since it is so graphic in execution. We'll see what the rest of the hair allows.

On Thursday it's time to deepen my shadows and liven them up with the compliment for the dominant orange, yellow orange tones in the piece. You can see all the blue/purple tones going into the shadow areas and giving some final sense of form and depth to the lion. It's also time for me to go in and start smoothing out a bunch of the rough areas and cleaning things up. I still think that in the end I will need to punch up the brightness of the Lion and push the shadows and highlights more to help pull him from the background. Adding those blue purple hues seems to have dulled out a lot of my dark areas. But I'm gonna force myself to execute the mouse first and then adjust the entire image when done. It's really funny looking back at the original image now and I am very glad that I went with the idea to paint the lion the way that I would now rather than trying to duplicate what I did 13 years ago. I'll have to put up a little animation or side by side and get you guys input on what you think about the differences.

I attempted to redo the mouse but I was rushing and making it up out of my head. It just wasn't working for what I wanted. I'm also not sure what moment I want to capture with this image. Will this be the moment that the Mouse is still afraid of the lion and cowering? Will it be when he is offering hi services to the lion? Or will it be after he's pulled the thron out? The lion's expression says that it will be one of the first two, but we'll see! Let me know what you think!

So Monday all I'll be doing is finding reference for the mouse. I took a quick dig at it today and found an African striped back mouse. How much fun will that be! And it will add some regional clarity to the image. Hopefully the mouse ends up in a pose that shows his back to the reader. We'll see!! Also, looking at the image shrunk makes me think that I need to pull more of the dark areas of mane from the left to the right along the inside of his right paw. Do you see what I'm talking about? Hmmm...Well, have a good weekend folks. Don't forget to click the images for larger views if you like!

-Wilson

Wisdom Wednesday

Good evening folks! Today I'm gonna talk about a couple of other blogs that keep my ears occupied on those long nights slaving away at my desk! LOL! First up is a blog that I have been enjoying for quite some time.

Big Illustration Party Time!
Hosted by Kevin Cross and Joshua Kemble. A funny and insightful couple of guys who speak about the trials and tribulations of being a freelance artist. They talk about the things they've done right and the things they wish they'd done better. They interview other artists within the industry and get insight into their processes and wisdom. I highly recommend giving these guys a try! They don't speak specifically about children's books but what they say about the freelance illustration industry applies to us just the same.

Also of note, Joshua Kemble's wife Mai is a published Children's Book Illustrator and SCBWI member. He talks about her and some of the things she does every now and then on the show as well. I may have to write them and see if they can get her to do an interview for us Children's Illustrators out there! Her blog is located here! :)

My second feature is LibriVox. Librivox is a group of volunteers who do audio recordings of public domain literature. Thanks to them I have enjoyed all the Wizard Of Oz novels and in anticipation of Tim Burton's new Alice in Wonderland movie, Alice in Wonderland. They have tons of literature there for free and it is an easy way to re-read classics while getting your work done at the same time. I have seen Aesop's Fables, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and Mother Goose rhymes available.

Be aware that these are volunteers recording these stories. So the quality or professionalism of some will be very different from one recording to the next. But I have never encountered one that was completely unbearable. There are a number of Children's Stories and I plan on listening to one entitled Japanese Fairy Tales fairly soon. I get a lot of great ideas for illustrations from these older stories! And the idea of doing Japanese art style inspired Illustrations is intriguing to me!

Enjoy!!
-Wilson

Lion and Mouse Friday Update

I'm working hard to keep the Lion and the Mouse piece a strictly during my lunch time experiment. But I just got through uploading it to my web page so that I can download and work on it at home if I want to. Tee Hee!! Even though I know that I have so many other PAYING things that I need to be working on at home instead. We'll see if I can stick to task and focus on what I need to this weekend!

Ok let's go through how this Monster is progressing!At this point I spend around half my lunch hour plucking away at this. Which is about a half hour. Here is a daily progression from the last image I posted which was from Tuesday. This image is from Wednesday. I'm starting to get close to finalizing what I "think" I want for the background. And finally feel like I am getting the hand of the brush I am using in photoshop to get the watercolor-ish look. But so far so good. The mouse has yet to make an appearance though. Poor mousey. 

The Thursday image I am starting to lay in some tones on the lion. Trying to flesh him out and battling with whether or not I'll just break down and render him in my current style or do  my best to keep it as close to the original execution style as possible. I settle on a blend of the two. Try my best to keep as much of the watercolor looks as possible. But when it gets down to it I need to see current me in what I do! So a blend will be necessary.

The Friday image. I realize that I need to flesh out the Lion a bit more and get a more solid foundation on how he looks and how I want light to affect him and whatnot. I was getting to be too much of a slave to the original piece. Constantly looking back and forth at it. I've currently removed it from my piece and I'm just gonna draw and paint the rest of this the way I would currently do it!  So I redrew the Lion and I feel a lot better about this now! Still no mousey though. Maybe Monday!!! 

Have a great weekend folks!!

-Wilson

On the Drawing Board-WIP

So, what's on my drawing table, other than some freelance work? (Which I should have wrapped up by the end of this weekend.) The W.I.P's (Work in Progress) are as follows, the image above is a second image from the Singing Chef John story. Since I need to show some character continuity, I thought this image made sense to move towards completing. The other Chef John image is here on my website. I've laid in some very base colors, but I still need to go back in and correct all the perspectives and whatnot and make the character a bit shorter. He is too tall to match the other image, in my opinion. And his ears should be a lot bigger!

Below is another sketch. Something with animals and children. The scene is from a story about a little girl named Bernice(on the left) and her magic red boots. When she dances magical things tend to happen. This sketch isn't done. I'm going to finish it in Photoshop and finalize the girl on the right, have her(Bernice) throwing her hat in the air and add another mouse on the left that will be dancing with her. Anything else you folks see needs fixin' let me know!!!

To my left is where I currently am with the redo of the Lion and the Mouse image. The original is in this post. It's taking a lot to try and maintain the watercolor feel of things and figure out how to get the look. But surprisingly, going back to an old piece and reworking it is quite eye opening. There's so many decisions I made in this as far as design and composition that I wouldn't do today. SO many things that I uncover and wonder, "What was I thinking?" So many things make no sense whatsoever. It's comforting to know that I have learned and grown in the past ten plus years. LOL! 

This is my work piece. The image I work on while I'm on my lunch at my daytime job. And it is proving fun. I'm very curious to see how it evolves. I plan on maintaining the watercolor look in the background but going more with my current style in the foreground characters. But we'll see!! I also can't wait to redo the little mousey! Should be fun!!! Let me know what you guys think!!

-Wilson

Wisdom Wednesday

"We are our own worst enemy" rings very, very true to me. I look at so many portfolios online and so many books in the library and stores and wonder, why not me? Well the answer is pretty simple. I have never believed enough in myself to let it happen. The difference between me and the folks with published books on those shelves that I browse is that they believed enough in themselves to be persistent and keep pursuing opportunities until somebody gave them a chance and they followed through.

All this is being brought on by me going through some old boxes of mine. (You see I'm a slight pack rat. I would swear I inherited it from my Mother but I'm sure the scientific validity of that could be called into question fairly easily.) I was looking through these boxes because in the back of my mind I remembered that I had held onto all the rejection letters I'd received from publishers I'd sent samples to after graduating from college.

You see, I'd graduated rather gung-ho and enthusiastic. Enthused at the prospect of doing for a living what had always been my passion. Drawing and Painting. I remember going to Kinko's and creating all these sample packets with a resume, cover letter, a few postcard size samples, and a SASE. I don't remember mailing them off. I do remember the responses trickling back in to my mailbox over the next few months. And I remember feeling very depressed and sad at the responses when I opened them. But I made myself keep those letters with the thought that when the day came that I started getting positive responses, I'd look back at those rejections and have a little laugh about what it was like getting started. A token of wisdom to share with family or children in the future.

I was looking for the letters to get some perspective. To see what kind of things I had done wrong so that I wouldn't make the same mistakes. As the new sets of letters began to come in I wanted to post those on this blog as part of my current journey. A way of cataloging the things I've done correctly and the good responses I get as well as the things I do wrong and need to adjust or do better the next time.


So imagine my surprise when I found this packet of letters and found that the scathing rejections I remembered weren't there. I know I didn't throw them away. So what happened to them? I remember the letters coming to me and being depressed. But they weren't there. No mean spirited art director rejections in the whole stack. I found to my pleasure that while some didn't currently have work for me, others liked my samples....Yes LIKED my samples and simply wanted me to send them more.

How in the world had this come across to me as rejection? Why had I never simply done what the Art Directors wanted me to and sent them more artwork? Was the prospect of being successful really that intimidating? Maybe I expected the letters to come back all negative and confirm my fears that I simply wasn't good enough. And when positive letters came I convinced myself of something else rather than deal with the fear of acceptance I was feeling rather than the fear of rejection I was expecting. I'd prepared myself for one and not the other.

Now here it is ten plus years later and I am just now ready to jump back into this possibility in my life. It took this long to get over that fear. Only to look back at it and see that I only had success to be fearful of.

It reminds me of a show I used to watch when I was younger, Tales from the Crypt or Darkside or something like that. During the ending credits a voice would come on and say something. I can't remember what it said exactly, but it managed to spook the bejeezums out of me. After that I remember every time the show was over, I had to get up and run to cut the show off before the spooky voice came on. As an adult I saw the show on TV in reruns and rewatched it. It got to the end and that urge in me to turn the channel before the voice came on was still there. But I no longer remembered what about the voice or end of the show was so scary to me. So I let it play. And you know what, I still have no idea what was so spooky to me about the end of that show. I'd managed to hold onto the fear all this time and had actually stopped being scared of whatever it was a long time ago. Lesson learned.

This time I'll prepare myself on both ends. I'll have support systems and crit groups and forums and art websites to help push me forward. I will promote myself in every way that I can. I'll have honesty about my capabilities and the things I need to work on and improve as well as confidence in the things that I FINALLY feel I am good enough at. I'll stay a student of this industry and learn all I can about it and how it works and do my best to pass on those lessons to others.
I am also going to put up a few of those letters I'd kept. And use them as a positive springboard for myself. Let the process I started ten plus years ago still be the start of my process today. And I will post the letters I get as things move forward. Be they positive or negative. And I will learn and grow from them as I make myself good enough to gain access to this industry I have wanted to be a part of for so long. Wish me luck and endurance folks!

-Wilson