Who would believe a bird tossing a football to a butterfly?

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32/365

Today was a busy family day. In keeping with the plan to make progress every I resorted to a quick sketch of Jimmy Jay and Buddy Butterfly playing some football. I’m amused at the thought of a butterfly catching a football launched by a jaybird with a rocket for an arm. The thing is, Buddy actually catches the ball and fires it back.

With time running short I inked the sketch in Photoshop then applied some color. I’ll revisit this tomorrow and add a background.


Digitally cleaned up Bird and Butterfly Riding Bicycles

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31/365

Ah, the magic and mystery of Photoshop! On one hand it gives, and with the other it takes away. I used PS to clean up the watercolor image I made a few adjustments and added some cleanliness at the cost of some of watercolor’s magic randomness.

I removed the background, added shadows and highlights, speed lines, moved Jimmy to the background, and re-inked the outlines of Jimmy and Buddy. This took about 2 hours. I’m quite a novice with Photoshop and tasks always take longer than I think they should. I always have the feeling that I’m fighting against an invisible giant when I’m in Photoshop.

One other big difference is that I switched to my pen display today. Lately I’ve been using my Wacom Intuos Pro, the big one, but I’ve been looking at lots of reviews of the new Wacom Cintiq 16 and got the itch to reinstall my Huion drivers. I made all of the edits with my Huion GT 220 V2, which also has a stylus with 8000+ levels of sensitivity. I do prefer the feel of the Wacom stylus, but I work much faster on the pen display. What’s more relevant: feel or speed? Time will tell.

Compare this painting to the original posted yesterday.

In my hands, Photoshop removes much of the original watercolor’s charm. Sigh!

A bird and a butterfly riding bicycles!

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30/365

Today I don’t have a finished painting, so I’ll post what I have up to this point. I’ve heard you’re not supposed to let them see you sweat, but that saying doesn’t apply when I’m trying keep a record of my learning how to create a children’s book. So, here it is: my sweaty art work, incomplete and in need of some loving attention.

I’ll post the finished version tomorrow for comparison.

One more pass at the poppy field

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29/365

I thought that yesterday’s version of the poppy field was over-painted, so today I tried to restrain my heavy hand. I used the lightpad to trace yesterday’s painting using a brown Prismacolor pencil onto some Strathmore Bristol board, then had at it. I lighted up on Buddy Butterfly to give him a little lighter feel, and I incorporated some reflected light in Jimmy Jay’s shirt and pants. I then went over some of the lines with a black Prismacolor pencil.

Then I got carried away sprinkling yellow color into the sky, as if to say, “Hey, it’s a brilliantly sunny day and these guys are gonna be best friends.”

UPDATE: rescanned this image with my new A3 scanner. The quite blues in the sky were nonexistent when I scanned with my ancient HP printer/scanner.

Jimmy Jay makes a butterfly friend

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28/365

Today the pressure of my self-imposed March 31 deadline hit me hard. With all of the questions of style, color palette, line width, pen and ink, or brush and ink, etc. running through my head, I felt the I was spinning my wheels when I should be working through my storyboard. I decided to skip all of the questions of technique and just draw and paint the best I can.

I chose to draw and paint Jimmy Jay making friends with Buddy Butterfly in a field of poppies. I think they both want to be the boss of the poppy Buddy is sitting on. By the way, Buddy is supposed to be a Monarch butterfly — I’ve definitely got his colors too reddish, but I’ll fix that in the final rendition. And I’ll make the poppies more poppyish. All in all, this is one more inch of progress.

In this picture I inkied only Jimmy and Buddy, and outlined a couple of poppies with a Prismacolor black colored penci. It’s produces a soft black that doesn’t overpower.

Today's goal: painting with a big, wet brush

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27/365

After painting the treehouse, I saw some improvements I will make when I do the final artwork. The first improvement is to thoughtfully use aerial perspective to make background recede and allow the treehouse to be even more the center of attention. The second improvement is to paint the foliage by making bigger, bolder strokes.

Today’s painting is an exercise in using a big brush loaded with lots of water. The idea was to paint large areas like the big purple chair in a continuous stroke, without lifting the brush. I needed a big fluffy brush that holds a lot of water, so I used my size 10 Da Vinci 1503 Kolinsky. It does a great job on washes with the size of paper I’m using today, which is a Kunst & Papier sketchbook of 8 x 8 inches. The paper in this sketchbook isn’t sized, so I knew I would have to keep the brush wet and hustling.

In this picture Momma Jay is relaxing in her treehouse by watching Letterkenny. I’m surprised that such low humor floats her boat.

All that’s missing is a bottle of Molson.

Re-inking the treehouse

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26/365

Every morning I look at my previous night’s work. In the past I’ve found fault with pretty much everything thing I do, whether it’s my fiction or my drawings. I don’t take that voice seriously any more. Too many times I’ve looked at my old work and thought, “Damn, that’s good. Why did I give up so easily.” I’ve learned the my inner critic is just a real noisy bitch with nothing constructive to say. So, today I looked at my inked treehouse and liked it. But, that’s not to say that I can’t improve the line work. The problem is that inking with a technical pen makes for a flat drawing with all the lines the same visually uninteresting width.

I slapped my sketch on the lightbox and re-inked it with heavier lines in some places. The tree house definitely has more “pop”, and I added a door in the tree trunk.

The color palette at the bottom corner is the Tom Purvis advertising poster scheme that I’m going to use when I paint this picture tomorrow. I like the friendly colors. I found it in the Retro Graphics book.

That front door looks inviting.

Would you like to live in a treehouse? I would!

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25/365

I decided that my Jay family will live in a treehouse because I always wanted a treehouse when I was a kid, preferably a treehouse like the one in “The Swiss Family Robinson.” Here are the original sketch and the first inking. I used my lightbox to do the tracing.

My scanner didn’t want to scan this. Hence, a quick photo.

That ladder has got to go!

Arrival in a safe place

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24/365

Now that I’ve got my studio set up for traditional media, with a real sketching area with a tilting drawing board, I’m realizing that drawing with pencil and paper is way more fun that sliding a slick plastic “pencil” over a hyper-slick glass surface. I have this realization three or four times and year, then I gradually feel an urge to go back to digital drawing, where I can just upload directly instead of going through a scanning and clean up process.

Now that I’m drawing actual pages for my book, I still don’t feel like I have a style, but I’m leaning toward pen and ink again. The color in the drawing below is digital, but it’s so loose and sloppy that it reminds me of my watercolor paintings, which is fine with me. I’m not a purist about watercolor. If the digital color looks good, it’s good enough.

I’m going to have to exercise my editing eye with those trees…maybe one too many dreadlocks?

5 favorite things in search of a style

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23/365

I’m in search of a style. I know I prefer pen and ink, but within the realm of pen and ink, I’m unresolved. Is it dip pen and ink, or Rapidograph or brush pen and ink? Is the color added with watercolor or marker? Should I hatch everything — I truly love to hatch? In fact I hatch until the hatch lines consume my drawing and there’s nothing left but blackness.

When I found Lilla Rogers Creative Bug course named “Treasure Hunt Your Artistic Style: a 10-day Challenge”, I signed up thinking that I might be able to get a inch closer to finding my real style. I know I’m just getting started, and I know that it may take years but if I can get one inch closer to my real style, it’s worth trying the course.

The first assignment is to draw 5 favorite things.I chose a Hiroshige book, my Rolleiflex, my iPhone, my EarPods, and my Da Vinci travel brush, all awesome things. I sketched the goods in pencil, inked with a ballpoint pen, and dropped in some watercolor.

The Rollei was the same value as the iPhone screen until I zapped it with Photoshop.