Jimmy Jay and Topaz make eye contact

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11/365

I spent my painting time putting together the sketch and color layers I created yesterday. I thought it would take about an hour, but it took much longer. I spent more time on the digital compositing than on the actual drawing and painting. Photoshop is an awesome and seductive time sink. Still, I like what I can do with PS. I’m happy working in a hybrid way, using traditional media to create and digital to get it ready for publication.

The final image of two day’s labor… One of the problems with animal characters is what to do with their tails. Notice that Jimmy doesn’t have a tail, but Topaz does.

Hmmm. It looks like I’ve mislaid Topaz’ eyepatch.

Carrot boy monster riding a Big Wheel

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10/365

With a little extra holiday time on my hands I’ve managed to create my third gouache painting. Unfortunately I got completely off track and my intended Jay bird somehow morphed into a rather demonic unwashed organic carrot kid riding a Big Wheel tricycle. The upside is that I did this in gouache and painted from my whimsical imagination, and I used a limited color Zorn palette of M Graham gouache that I picked up at our local Ace Hardware store this morning — yellow ochre, cadmium red light, lunar black, and zinc white.

I’m thinking the carrot boy’s crazy eyes may not be quite right for a children’s book.

A year from now I’ll look back on this painting and say, “That was the painting that gave my career a whole new direction.”

Tomato, anyone?

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9/365

I spent a few hours watching acrylic painting for beginners courses today. Afterwards I decided to paint a tomato in acrylic gouache. It’s called gouache but it’s not really gouache. The difference is that acrylic gouache is acrylic paint thinned down with water. When it dries, it cures and becomes a plastic film that’s waterproof and impossible to reactivate. Gouache, on the other hand, is water-soluble and can be re-activated.

I used three colors for this painting and mixed the greens and reddish-oranges using yellow ochre, cobalt blue, permanent red, and threw in some black and white just to see what would happen. Color mixing is a whole new experience for me.

Tomato or apple? The leaves tell me it’s a tomato.

And now for something completely different--gouache

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8/365

One of my deepest insecurities is my fear of painting. By painting i mean oil, acrylic, and gouache painting. It’s one of those things where I say to myself, “that looks impossible. You have to be gifted to do it, and I couldn’t possibly even attempt it. In fact, I’ll avoid it and go back to sketching and doodling where I feel comfortable.” So, with that thought in mind I decided that I’ve been letting myself be pushed around by a self-limiting thought that’s trying to protect me from embarrassment and failure. It’s time to move on from that old baggage.

And what did I paint in celebration of my newfound fearlessness? A cartoon jaybird, of course, because that pushes me one inch forward on my plan to self-publish a children’s picture book by March 31.

Waiting for the electricity to come back on

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7/365

Unfortunately, work disturbed my 365 day schedule today, so i’m posting a doodle. When I doodle I usually draw the same thing over and over…people with insane eyes, Pomeranians, cats, clouds. And I always like to use a fine liner or technical pen. Using a Rapidograph gives me the feeling that I’m channeling Robert Crumb.

I’m still trying to get a handle on what a Jay should look like.

Monarch Butterfly of sorts

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6/365

I looked at my reference photo a dozen times drawing this Monarch butterfly and got the white marking all wrong. I’m going to put “pay more attention to details” on my TODO list. Today I inked this with a Zig Cartoonist sable brush. I heard somewhere that the pros use this brush. Naturally, I wanted one, thinking it probably had some magic in it. However, in my hands this brush is like a slippery eel flopping across the page. More practice needed.

The Zig cartoonist sable brush is might difficult to handle. The sable hair is generously long, and very flexible, almost like a rigger. My heavy-hand sent the line skidding around the page. Still, the brush endows lines with lots of personality.

Jimmy Jay holding his butterfly buddy

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5/365

Jimmy Jay, the protagonist of The Jay That Fell Down the Chimney, is holding his pal, Buddy Butterfly. I used a Pentel Pocket Ink brush for the inking. I have two of them, one comes to a nice point, and the other is a almost blunt — that’s the one I used for this drawing. I learned that it’s unwise to use a blunt brush when lots of fine lines are needed.

An hour before I started drawing I was looking through Albrecht Durer’s woodcuts. I really like his clouds and skies. I can say that I need to practice drawing parallel lines and practice keeping even pressure on the ink brush.

The Final Page of The Jay Who Fell Down the Chimney

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Day 4/365

I started this drawing thinking I would be clever and draw the last page first. I read this Hergé used this strategy. Just as I started to ink this page I thought of a better page. Maybe this will be the next to the last page. Maybe I’m not up to Hergé’s level…yet.

My materials included pencil, nib pen and ink, water soluble graphite, and a couple of Copic markers for the little butterfly, who has become a central character in the story…as of today, as of when I was coloring him with the markers. Yes, it’s pretty wild inside my head.

Realistic and Comic Jays

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Day 3/365. A quick realistic sketch (as realistic as I could draw it) of a Steller’s Jay. These rascals are especially obnoxious and lovable in the Fall as they pass through Ashland on their way to the sunny South. Standing next to the real Jay is Jimmy Jay, my comic jay. Jimmy seems to be changing his appearance every day. I see that today he has some hatching to indicate form instead of being totally flat as he was yesterday. Eventually I want to create the perfect Jimmy Jay…so perfect that I won’t want to tinker with his looks for the next 20 years.

I use my Cheap Joe’s Legend Kolinski travel brush for this picture. They are awesome.


Creating my avatar

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Day 2/365 I decided to create an avatar for the social sites I belong to. Since I’m an illustrator, I thought it would be appropriate to draw and paint my avatar rather than just show a photo. I really enjoyed drawing this — playing with ink and paper is simply fun.

The process was to: 1) trace my photo avatar; 2) use the lightbox to transfer the outline to my sketchbook; 3) ink it using my Nikko G nib; 4) watercolor it; 5) the clean it up in photoshop.

This was originally color blue, but it looked too “Blue Man.” Thank you, Photoshop, for providing a nice way to change the color to something less cliché.