IF-Lesson

Learn your Lesson Well!

IF-Duet

This Illustration was done for the cover of May Issue of Stories for Children Magazine. It should be available online May 1st.

Enjoy the sketch and Final illustration. I'll post the image with Type on May 1st!

A Duet of Spirits Harmonize to Create Independence.

IF-Surrender

We must surrender our fears and face the unknown!!

IF:Chicken

An older watercolor piece dug up from the grave! LOL! I had a weird thing for strange perspectives back in the day. I still have it but not to the same extreme!

Also, does a Rooster count as a chicken?

Cardinal Luv Fest!-Worksheet Sketch

This is a comp for the worksheet. There are still big issues with the kerning and whatnot of the actual puzzle. (Add some letters take some out to fill the space better.) Gonna be lots of fun fixing that! LOL!
I'm thinking of having a full color scene behind all the hearts. Maybe grass and some trees or something to give it more depth. All of that would be masked inside that amoeba shape that is going around everything. While that would probably translate well in color, I doubt the same would be true of the B/W version. We'll see. Suggestions are welcome!

And Oh Yeah! The puzzle is complete! So please check to make sure you can find all the words! Thanks!

As always Click for bigger image! Then Use Ctrl/+ to enlarge the image!
(Can be done multiple times.)

Cardinal Luv Fest!

Sketch for a Vector Spot image! I think his expression could be amped a bit. Maybe make him smiling a bit more? You know, he's cute but the emotion isn't really reading as anything specific to me. What do ya think?

As always Click for bigger image! Then Use Ctrl/+ to enlarge the image!
(Can be done multiple times.)

Also, yes, this will also be going up for "Mail" on Illustration Friday! I want to have it done by Wednesday! Which also means that it needs to be a worksheet. (Worksheet Wednesday you know!) I'm thinking a crossword puzzle will work. Anybody got some clues and words that will go with the theme of this sketch??

Wish me luck!

IF: Savour

Illustration Friday: SAVOUR

IF: Star Gazing

Oh to live among the stars above!!! Enjoy!

Wisdom Wednesday

Heya folks!!

Above is my post for the word "Flying" for Illustration Friday!! It's just a sketch right now and I am working on tightening it up to submit to something later on. We'll see!! I'll post the final image when I'm done!!

Many times I have drawn a character and had someone say to me, "Oohh she looks Cuban." or "Oooh is he supposed to be Irish?" And often I don't have an answer for them. Most times I'm drawing characters as I see them in my head and I'm not really thinking about their nationality. But if I got an assignment and needed to draw an Irish person or a Polynesian person, how could I easily go about doing that accurately?

Being African American I am very familiar with the generic qualities and traits that make a person look like they are African American. But what about Chinese versus Japanese, vs. Tibetan vs. Vietnamese vs. Korean vs. Malaysian!!!! All are similar but different and have there own distinctive facial features and body types. Is there a book on this that I can snag? How do I get something that's fairly thorough? I searched and found books that would list general races and they barely skimmed the surface of the spectrum of ethnicities that encompass the globe. African, Asian, Caucasian and Latin seemed to be as deep as anybody went. But then one day I got very lucky!!

I am a member of a website called DeviantArt. An online community for every kind of artist there is. Very often people will post tutorials and show other their process through images or video. At the time I was looking for a tutorial on adult vs. children proportions. (You know, how many heads tall is a five year old versus a twelve year old and so on.) Well I found it, but I also found that this particular artist also had created a number of amazingly informative and thorough tutorials on varied ethnicities across the globe!

Hallelujah!!!

Her screen name is Cedarseed and her actual name is Joumamna Medlej. She is a Lebanese graphic artist and Art Director and she has put together a number of wonderful tutorials on a variety of subject matter specific to drawing. But in this post I'll focus on the ones that center on human types.

There is a set of three titled the, "Guide to Human Types." She begins each with an explanation of why this study is so valuable to artists then breaks down into the varying ethnicities. She starts with a general model, (Asian for example) and gives the general body types, height comparison male to female, eye, skull, nose and facial shape. Then gets into the varied Asian ethnicities and the traits that separate them from the general model. Such as eye color, skin color and hair color. All wonderfully illustrated and meticulously presented!

Guide to Human Types-Part 1
Guide to Human Types-Part 2
Guide to Human Types-Part 3
Guide to Human Types-Addendum

If you print these tutorials out you will find that they are quite large and would work well hung above your desk for quick visual reference if you wanted. If not, she has compiled a number of her tutorials and offers them for sale through her website. (I will be ordering one myself soon!!)

She has a number of other great tutorials as well! And I have every intention of highlighting those in the future. But if you want to get a jump and start investigating yourself, just check out her page that has links to all the tutorials she has created up to this point and enjoy!!

-Wilson

Just a Touch Up

I have an account on DeviantArt. One of the major benefits of that site is that I get to see which of my pictures gets viewed and faved the most often. There is a particular piece from my years in college that is far and away the favorite piece of my collection and it is below.

The Lion waited impatiently for the Mouse to explain his proposition.

For my senior thesis in college I did a giftcard set of African Folklore. That included Aesop's fables and that included, "The Lion and the Mouse". This was one of my first watercolors and I haven't been able to get it out of my portfolio SINCE!! LOL! It haunts me to no end! But I have to be honest with myself about why it is so popular.

But my problem right now is that I want my portfolio to be completely digital. No mediums other than a pencil sketch that is then colored in Photoshop. Watercolors are just too unpredicatable and difficult to edit for me to see them as a viable medium for freelance work at this time. In time I want this to change, but for now this is how I feel. I don't mind emulating watercolors in Photoshop, which I haven't figured out how to do quite yet. But I definitely want to make my entire portfolio digitally based. While I love this piece, I know that adding it ensures that I will get many requests to do work in this medium and style. So it can't be part of my portfolio in its current state.

So how do I correct this issue? I was wondering recently how this piece would look if I redit it in Photoshop? Created a digital version of it. And maybe not just this piece but some others of note from my previous portfolio. Does this sound like a good idea? Do you think something like this could enhance my portfolio and get "The Lion and The Mouse" monkey off my back? I definitely think I could add a lot more character to these and my rendering skills have improved a good deal since then (I like to think so anyway).

So what do you guys think? Below are more potential contendors for a digital do over. All of them are watercolor/gouache pieces. Any input is great!

Thanks

-Wilson

Shy Rhino Before and After

This is the image before I changed it up some. I needed to add something to it to make it relevant for a children's book portfolio. I thought making it an Alphabet book page made perfect sense.



There was also some concern that the grass in his/her mouth doesn't look like it was actually in the mouth. And that the portion of the rhino's body below the face was hard to read and understand. I wanted to address those issues too.



At the end of the day I did struggle with adding the letter in. I wanted to make it composed of grass or 3-D in some way. But I settled on simpler being better. I integrated the letter into it's environmemt but kept it fairly non-rendered and easily readable. The objective of the piece should be that the letter is legible and easily identifiable for the young reader. I think this change makes the piece have more of a story and purpose and considerably more relevant to my portfolio.

I'll probably also submit this piece to Illustration Friday for the word this week, idle. It'll be my first time and hopefully it'll be received well. Here's hoping!! :)

-Wilson