WIP Book Cover #12 - Color

And here would be some of the process on the final (12 of 12) book cover for the Wind Dancer series.

The final drawing - on vellum, scanned and then printed out on 140# cold press Arches watercolor paper.

I started by laying in the miscellaneous ancillary color.

Part of the appeal of using morning glories is their luscious, vivid color...

So I painted in pretty intense pigment (which is quite a bit brighter than the photo suggests. Was too busy to scan). Too intense. Scary intense. Staining pigments used. Argh.

So - I tried scrubbing them back. As I said, staining pigments (Quinacradone Rose and Cyan) so not much came off. Tried light washes to even things out. Just. Not. Working. :-p

*sigh* So, I printed it out again and started over....

Tried a different pigment combination (Opera pink and French ultramarine) and used a much lighter touch...

Color/value balance still isn't working all the way but it is much easier to continue to layer and *add* than it is to scrub off... More layers to come...

These four covers are about 80% finished. I'm now trying to finish up the last 20% on all four concurrently. Hopefully by the end of this week! I have seriously underestimated how long these would take - but I did manage to cover *every*single*inch* of the paper with flowers that need to be painted on each of these covers.

And I continue to ask myself - What was I thinking...??

So true -

-it's not even funny...

Sunday Sketching -

With some Saturday sketching thrown in for good measure...

Watched a broadcast Saturday night - in another dimly lit room..

I'm going to have to start carrying around a mini-book light with me. These old eyes are not what they used to be. Getting kinda tired of trying to sketch in the dark. Can't see what I'm doing...

And today was quick-head-sketch day -

- about two to five minutes a piece. Heads a bit smaller than a quarter.

Sketching in funny places...

I've been all sorts of places that are *not* the studio this week...

A couple of nights ago, I was tagged to chaperon the daughter and some friends at a Colbie Caillat concert at a downtown refurbished-warehouse venue. No chairs, packed with (much taller) people and meltingly hot - after an hour I gave up...

...and walked down the street to an air-conditioned, well-lit location. With chairs. And working surfaces. :-) I had several hours to kill - so worked on some inital roughs for the next book interior -

-as well as playing with some more of the thumbnails of the winter promo. There were some ideas that I wanted to explore further to see if there was enough potential to warrant refining... I felt like all those 'real' artists who work in cafes and coffee shops, but I was somewhere even better!


Ah, Krispy Kreme - thank you for your cool, brightly lit interior which comes stocked with donuty goodness (the seasonal 'pumpkin spice' donuts are quite tasty) - and that you let me sit at your tables for three hours...


The next evening she and I attended a musical at the Village Theatre. Here's another spot for sketching in the dark. :-) Couldn't really see much in my tiny Moleskine as I tried to draw, but I enjoyed the costumes and sets and some of the profiles, so wanted to see if I could at least make a mental note...


It was a cute production. You can see some snippets here.

Drawing with donuts. In the dark. That's how I roll...

WIP Book Cover #11 - Color

Cover painting crawls on...

Here is the final drawing, scanned, cleaned-up and printed out on cold press...

The first, preliminary masking fluid and initial color set down...

Here is a layer of color across the entire piece...

Secondary washes and initial modeling... Now on to the next one - I'm bringing them all to about this level of finish and then will tighten them all up together.

Makes me crave rose flavored yummies. One of my favorites to make is rose petal syrup. I grow highly fragrant, heirloom roses that are wonderfully flavorful. Steep in boiling sugar water, strain, lightly tint and pour into pretty bottles. Then use in tea, splashed over ice and seltzer, drizzled over vanilla ice cream.... You can do the same thing with lavender, mint, anise hyssop, lemon verbena, orange-geranium, cinnamon basil, chamomile, tangerine sage.... Color them all differently and you can have window sill of pastel rainbow syrups for your taste bud pleasure (which unfortunately, I did not take photos of - stole these from google images...)

I'm taking too long with these. I may never get a chance to read your blogs again until they are finished. Sorry. I miss you.

Sunday Sketching -

Tried to push the stylizing a bit. (there were kids sitting behind me watching. They didn't think I captured the essence of the people I was drawing at all... Needs work apparently).

Also did another "Caroling"/winter promo idea sketch. It's fairly simple. And decorative (which I always seem to like). Still has a medieval flair, even if not particularly fantastical... I like this better than the other approaches thus far...

Life Drawing -

After a several month hiatus (surgery, summer, ER visits-with-husband...), I was pleased as punch to start up again this week -

It was fabulous to work on great big pads of newsprint with conte crayons and charcoal (as opposed to my tiny Moleskine)... Feeling kinda rusty with the eye-hand coordination, but was happy to be able to draw from the elbow and shoulder again.

I was very optimistic about what I could fit on my large paper (really enjoying the *big* here) so got a little truncated on leg length, but ah well... It was fun to be doing this again.


And FYI, the report on our critique meeting this week can be seen our our Painters of Bumping Lake blog...

WIP Cover #10 Color-

Not liking any of the dandelion-fluff versions that I've attempted, I've decided to go ahead and do the preliminary painting on the additional covers before going back and refining them all -

So, here's the final cover for book #10 - scanned and printed out -

Some initial washes...

Filling in all the base color -

- some additional layers to deepen areas -

-and some modeling of leaves and horse before leaving this one to go onto the next cover...

Book Signing - Spiderwick Chronicles

Last night I got to go to one of my favorite indepedent book stores, Third Place Books, for the farewell-tour and book signing for the Spiderwick Chronicles.

We've been fans since the very first volume. And now own each of the stories as well as many of the peripheral books (the "Field Guide", "The Care & Feeding of Sprites", the giant "Chronicles of Spiderwick"...)

My daughter had me take her out of school to see Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi the last time they come through on a Spiderwick tour (when we got the first batch of books signed). They are gregarious, humorous and imminently entertaining in person as well as on the page and a couple of my contemporary heroes. Spontaneity abounds - don't even ask about the impromptu audience rendition of "Puff the Magic Dragon"...

As part of their spiel Tony drew a number of on-the-spot characters (I'm always impressed by being able to draw spontaneously, in front of an audience, in pen!) which they then gave away to winners of Spiderwick trivia questions.

I sketched *them* while they talked. Made funner by it being rather dimly lit and their constant movements...

As I was sitting on the front row during their presentation, Tony saw me drawing and to my dismay asked to see my sketch book when we got to the front of the book-signing line. The horror, the horror....

But they are generosity itself when it comes to signing *every* thing you brought with you, in addition to letting you take pictures with them. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Here's hoping that talent rubs off a little?...

Concept Sketches - Winter promo -

Very rough, and currently full of Fail...

I had to sit through a couple of hours of meetings this week, so of course that means I sketched (I do listen. Really. I even take notes. I just also draw). My agents are asking us to submit a holiday self-promo piece, the theme is "Caroling".

For my children's-illustration-genre-prone brain, that could mean young angels...

...or Victorian mice?

..or how about something that could potentially cross-over into the fantasy market?

..but my brain seems to stall out here. Boring, boring compositions....

... and the contents get younger the more variations I attempt... alas...

Let's brain-storm from here, shall we? Taking suggestions.....

Sunday Sketching -

It was a conference weekend this week rather than 'regular' church ...

So, longer time period around the 'grown ups' -

-who obliged by standing up front for at least 10 minutes each-

-or a little longer. Makes for something a little more refined than the tiny facial 'gestures' that I get to do some weeks. Plus, keeps me awake - big plus.

Autumn garden -

Life drawing started up again today. So typically Fridays will be Life Drawing posts. Except that I didn't go today (luckily I have a fabulous assistant who ran things in my absence) since I had been up all night keeping my husband company in the ER with his latest kidney-stone attack. It's all over - everything's good, we're just both just suffering the after-effects of multiple hours spent at the hospital (in my case, in a hard folding chair in a chilly room). So, no life drawing. No art of any kind really today since I don't seem to be able to really focus my eyes... :-)

So instead, here's a report of impending ripeness in the yard:

One of my newer bushes, an aronia, or flaming chokeberry (as the autumn foliage gets gorgeously red-magenta), is covered with clusters of near-black, ripe berries. They are fairly bland to eat right off the bush but are supposed to be uber-high in antioxidants. So now to find other ways to use (I hear juice/jellies/breads are good?)

I also have a pretty good crop of Sea Buckthorn berries this year. *Very* tart eaten raw (almost impossible to eat actually), but also supposedly super high in Vitamin C and other nutrients. And sweetened, it tastes somewhat like passion-fruit, which I love. It's just a little precarious to pick because of the woody, thorny branches... Extreme-sport fruit harvesting!

This will also be my first year that my Hardy Kiwi vine will produce. These are 'baby' kiwis, about the size of grapes, thin skinned and sweeter than their larger, more common counterparts.

It is also the first productive year for my tiny dwarf Italian (prune) plums, my favorite plums to eat, dry, roast and turn into tarts. Tasty purple goodness!

And another first with this year's small, but yet substantial columnar apple crop. I'm all about the space efficient trees! I have 5 of these (three different varieties) growing along my deck. They only need to be planted about a foot apart from each other.

And even though I don't eat (or drink) them, the hops are blooming. Beyond their commonly known beer brewing usage, the flowers are also used in a number of herbal applications - the most common ones being related to sleep and their sedative qualities (a fabulous inclusion in a sleep pillow).

Sleep... sleep sounds good. Here's hoping for more luck with getting some tonight...