Staying On Course by Russ Cox

©2012 Russ Cox | Smiling Otis Studio

Since returning from the NESCBWI Conference in late April, I have been heeding the advice I have received from friends, agents, and art directors who have told me how much they love my drawings and sketches. With that advice, I have started playing around colorizing my sketches and drawings so that the looseness and energy does not get lost in the final art. I have been doing a doodle a day (and filled up one sketchbook since returning) which has lead me more down this path. This is the first "official" illustration I did with this looser style. The idea came from a conference doodle that I liked and thought would make a good promo piece.

I quickly worked out a composition based on the doodle. I wanted a slight over the head perspective that would focus on the characters and their "vehicles".

I then refined the sketch a bit more, developing the characters and the space crafts.

Once I got the characters heading the right direction, I did a final, tighter drawing that stilled kept the freshness of the previous sketches. This was scanned in at 300 dpi so that I could render it digitally. I left room at the top left for my contact info.

I imported the drawing into Painter. With the sketch layer set as the top most layer, and set to "multiply", I began laying in a background tone and blocks of color. Painter has this cool feature which will allow you to set your light direction as you can see with the gradated tone. Previously, I was doing a grayscale underpainting but I thought the color blocks would achieve the same effect. Plus I wanted to keep things spontaneous and fresh. Oh, I used the gouache brushes for this illustration.

With the color in place, highlights were added on a top layer. This allowed me to drop the white over top of the sketch as well.

I felt that the final illustration looked a little flat so I went back in and added some darker tones and lightened ares of the road and grass. I think it looks much better.

Since this is a postcard promo, I sketched the main characters from the front for the back of the card and will keep it as a black & white piece. All that is left to do is put it together and send it off for printing. 

Everyone put your hands together and give a great big cheer for Debbie Ohi as she will sharing something truly amazing on her post in two weeks. Thanks for reading and make sure to check out the other posts from my fellow Pixel Shavers.

Ciao,

Russ

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Cabin Boy from Hazel Mitchell

 I've been looking more at historic characters and settings lately. Maybe it's because I love historic films, documentaries and costume dramas ... it is definitely something I feel comfortable drawing!




This little guy turned up in one of my morning warm up sketches, and he features on my next postcard mailout.

I draw these digitally, in photoshop using only a couple of colours (usually inspired by a colour inspiration website). I don't do any underdrawing ... that way I can't overthink, plus I keep the freshness of the line.

See more of my work at http://hazelmitchell.com or on my blog at http://hazelmitchell.blogspot.com



 Next up on Pixel Shavings in June will be Russ Cox .. fresh from his clean sweep in the Poster Contest at NESCBWI!

Toodles!
Hazel

Being an Idea Factory by Fred Koehler

Dan Santat illustrated like seven books in one year. My friend Janeen Mason told me she can have a dozen projects at various stages of development all up in the air at once. At a recent SCBWI conference I heard repeated again and again that successful writers and illustrators are idea factories.

So while book numero uno, DAD'S BAD DAY, is in full swing, I'm keeping up the writing and the sketching and the concepts. Here are a couple of recent ideas that I think have some promise.

The Pink Princess Problem - wherein a poor little giant is pestered by princesses who are kinda snarky, mean, and evil.

The Happiness Emporium - wherein a penniless boy encounters a curious shopkeeper with the secret to lifelong happiness, and it's for sale.

Thanks to all of the friends of pixelshavings, and check in with us next month!

-Fred Koehler
freddiek.com

Developing A Concept by Russ Cox

© 2012 Russ Cox | Smiling Otis Studio

Happy New Year Everyone! For my first post of 2012, I thought I would share how I developed the concept for the above illustration. 

I started out with doodling in my sketchbook. The idea of a child swinging on an old branch was too symbolize "old and new" as well friendship.

After working up the sketch into a tighter drawing, the symbolism was not working and the tree branch became too scary. Especially when the end of the branch was turned into a gnarled hand. It seemed to be ready to grab the girl instead of forming an arch to show protection.

Since the sketch was not working, I decided to go back to doodling, trying to rework the concept or come up with something complete different. Sometimes it is best to step back and come from another angle. The idea was to make the illustration warmer in concept, so I thought what if she had a large oafish friend who would do anything for her. Maybe something happened to the tree where she had the swing and her friend was welling to pretend to be one to make sure she was happy. 

After roughing in the new layout, I noticed that I did not like the position of the rope over the girl's face. Plus the hand turned down had a negative feeling so I thought he needed his hand turned upward. Since he is pretending to be a tree, it was natural to put a bird's nest in his open hand.

I sketched out the new hand and girl which I dropped over top of the existing sketch. It saved me time redrawing the sketch for a third time since I would be doing a tighter version as my base for the final color illustration. I feathered the edges in Photoshop when I cut out the images so they overlapped the original sketch seamlessly.

The flowers were removed because they were a distraction from the interaction between the two characters. This is the final sketch which became the base of the final illustration which I rendered in Photoshop.

 In the final illustration, I wanted to mute the color palette so the warmth of their friendship shined through.

Having worked in Photoshop for the past 8 months, I think I am ready to tackle Painter so I may post the results next time.

Thanks for reading and following our glog.

Russ

Look for Debbie Ohi's always inspiring and insightful post next week

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A Christmas sketch by Fred Koehler

Happy holidays one and all. May your season be filled with gooseberry pudding, matching socks and winning lottery tickets. In the meantime, here's the elephant father/son duo I've been sketching so fervently as they settle down for a long winter's nap.

See more at FreddieK.com and come back next week for another great post from Sheralyn Barnes.

Sleepy Little Elephant by Fred Koehler

Baby close your eyes,
The moon's about to rise.

Your day has been much longer than
you'll ever realize.

Another day is done,
It's setting with the sun

And as you dream the stars will bring
to you another one.

So baby, close your eyes.

:-)  -fk

flikr.com/superfredd

Check back next week to hear from Sheralyn Barnes.

The Ugly Duckling - creating an ebook from Hazel Mitchell

Ebooks are springing up everywhere. With the rise and rise of ipad, and now Kindle Fire, the race is 'hotting' up. What does this mean for your commonal-garden illustrator/author?

Many of the most famous children's book titles are being generated as ebooks by the original publishers, other authors and illustrators are working directly with app companies to bring back-listed books to life. Best sellers look like they have the best chance of hitting the number one spots on the app lists.

Yet it's an open field. Anyone can create an ebook, or app, and, if it's good enough, have it accepted into the istore. And there are plenty of illustrators and authors creating work that will be published as an ebook FIRST. It's a whole new animal.

So I thought I would dip my toe in the water with a new company just about to launch called utales.com. Headed by (the wonderfully named) Nils von Heijne, this company is a little different. It's a worldwide community of excellent authors and illustrators creating quality picture books. With the online software interface created by Utales, authors and illustrators can design and upload their own books. Right now they are bringing in animation and sound tools, but I can only see these facilities growing after the launch.

One of the best things about this creator-driven company is that they have a great editing team headed up by Emma Dryden, of Dryden Books. So all the books are quality controlled - awesome! Utales are also working with 'Pencils of Promise'. P Proceeds from each sale can be donated to the charity and help fund projects in schools across the world.

The company asked for creators to retell a classic tale before the launch. I chose the great favorite by Hans Christian Andersen, 'The Ugly Duckling'. Here are some of the images I created from the book. I hope you'll check out the animated version on Utales when it launches in the coming weeks! Watch this space for details.

 

 

 

Oh, I didn't mention that there was also a competition involved for the creation of a classic tale. The first prize is an ipad, so please keep all your extremities crossed! 

Thanks for stopping by Pixel Shavings this week.

Don't forget to join us on Facebook

Plus, watch out for the next Pixel Shavings mail out. Maybe one will be dropping in your mail box soon.

Call in next week to see what Russ Cox will be chatting about.

Toodles!

Hazel

hazelmitchell.com

Carrot on a String by Fred Koehler

My mom used to tell me that the reward of hard work was the satisfaction of a job well done. I think mom was just being a cheapskate. We all need a reason to exist. To wake up. To go to work. To eat our peas and clean our rooms. Find yours. Work hard. Reward yourself. And have a wonderful week.

Love, Fred.

flikr.com/superfredd

PS - don't you dare miss next week's post from the wickedly fab Sheri Barnes.

Giant Hugs from Fred Koehler

At the end of this month, I get to spend the whole day in an SCBWI illustration intensive led by Ruth Cummins, Associate Art Director at Simon & Schuster. Our "homework" was to pick three or four pieces from our portfolio that demonstrate our style and the work we'd like to be doing.

Today's post is one of those pieces, a rework of my second favorite from the "Almost Giant" series. I was really happy for this assignment, because the discovery of who we are and who we want to be as artists is a significant achievement.

For instance I've always loved to create work that rewards the careful observer. I like to hide characters and messages in clever ways. I also like it when the whole drawing winks at you as though you're part of the story, too. Mediums and subjects will change from project to project, but a rockstar illustrator can't help but inject his/her character into every piece.

So consider yourself hugged, wish me luck at the conference, and check back next week for a fabulous post from the inestimable Sheralyn Barnes.

 

freddiek.com 

The Remake of Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel by Russ Cox

Like Hazel's posting last week, I redid a classic children's book cover for the NESCBWI conference over the weekend. It was very difficult to choose a cover from the thousands of possibilities. After doing some searches on titles to jog my memory, I rediscovered the classic Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton which I loved as a kid. Seeing the original cover after all of these years brought back many fond memories of the book. I thought the story was also a good fit for my style.
 

 
©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

   ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

 What I am going to fiocus on this week is how I developed the cover concept. I start out with a few quick thumbnails to get some form of visuals and composition flowing. Since we had to deal with the book title, we had to incorporate that into the cover redesign.

 

  ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

 What I did next was to to take a thumbnail that I liked and do a larger rough. This helped me define placement of the objects while continuing the development the composition.

  ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

Originally I had Mary Anne facing to the right but I did not want the book title on the left of the page. I flipped the image and thought the overall layout had a friendlier look. Adding some of the modern equipment looking up at Mary Anne helped keep the focus on her face.

 ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

  Now that I had the composition to my liking, it was time to focus on developing and fine tuning the characters. As you could see in the the thumbnail stage, I had started thinking about Mary Anne's face during the process. I wanted to keep her antique and rustic looking with just a few touches of wear and tear but still happy to be working. She was the hardest to get just right since she is an iconic character and the focus of the book. Mike and the boy were a bit easier.

 

  ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

I like drawing the fine tuned elements separately so when I scan them in, I can move, resize, flip, etc. without having to redraw each time. This always saves me time but continuing the development the illustration. The above sketch was finally to my liking so it was brought into Adobe Illustrator and used as a template. I built the illustration in layers for easy editing and if I want to move things around.

 

   ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

This was the final piece.

Come back next week to see what the wonderful Debbie Ohi has created for you.

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Who we are

Hazel Mitchell 

email : hazelmitchell@hotmail.com

I illustrate and write children's books and work on commercial illustration and design. My latest book is 'All Star Cheerleaders - Tick Tock, Taylor' by Anastasia Suen from Kane and Miller Publishing, a series of 4. You can find me scribbling away in Maine, USA.

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Russ Cox - Smiling Otis Studio

email : russ@smilingotis.com

Russ likes to draw and paint colorful pictures while wearing Chuck Taylors. Growing up in the South, he was always drawing or pulling weeds in the garden. Today he draws on his adventures (and misadventures) to create his world. When not in front of his drawing board, he is usually driving his wife crazy with his banjo playing or teaching his four cats to sing Bohemian Rhapsody.

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Fred Koehler - Almost Giant

email : fred@somelikeitsmart.com

Fred usually gets along with kids better than grown-ups because so many adults have forgotten how to make believe. He is enamored with illustration and the art of storytelling, and splits his time between children's books and a day job in the advertising industry.

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Sheralyn Barnes

email : info@sheralynbarnes.com

Sheralyn lives for the ethereal moments that she experiences in this great pool of life as much as the whimsical moments she experiences in the kiddie pool of her imagination. In a perfect world, she would spend her days watching squirrels. If she could come back in another life, she would probably BE a squirrel.

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Debbie Ohi

email : Debbie@DebbieOhi.com

A chronic doodler since childhood but formerly a writer by trade, Debbie was startled into children's book illustration through the SCBWI. Creepycute monsters intrigue her. Her first picture book: I'M BORED by Michael Ian Black (Simon & Schuster, 2012). She is being mentored by Cecilia Yung of Penguin USA, and is represented by Ginger Knowlton of Curtis Brown Ltd.

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John Deininger

email : jedeininger@msn.com

I’ve spent a lifetime escaping through story, crafting both words and pictures. Some of my favorites include robots, cats, waffles, and mustaches. I’m currently developing several picture books for kids, with the incredible help of my agent, Rubin Pfeffer, of East West Literary.

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