Random Act Of Publicity - by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Just received some good news this week! My illustrated short story, "Kodama," has been accepted for inclusion in Stone Bridge Press's YA fiction anthology, TOMO. Editor: Holly Thompson. Proceeds from the book will go toward teens affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011.

But now to the meat of today's post...

Hazel Mitchell, at the SCBWI Illustrator Intensive in LA,
holding a copy of the book I just purchased from her.

In honor of Random Acts Of Publicity Week, my post today focuses on a RAP about a book Hazel illustrated: TICK, TOCK, TAYLOR, written by Anastasia Suen. Here's how I created an image in Photoshop as part of today's RAP.

First, I scooped the cover image and put it on a separate layer, over the basic outline of my RAP cat:

I used a layer mask to clear the bit of cover that was going to have the cat's paw covering it. I also wanted an interesting background, so filled the bottom-most layer with a solid color:

As I continue to learn Photoshop CS5, I've been exploring its brush presets. One of my favorite libraries is the "M Brushes" preset. The cool cross-hatch texture in the background is one of the brushes from that preset:

Next, on other layers, I added the cat's coloring (with brushes from the same library) and the t-shirt, made some tweaks to fix the angle of the arm on the left.

Ta-daa!

Next week: the fabulous Fred Koehler.

Find out more about me at DebbieOhi.com.

If you're on Google+, do add yourself to my Kidlit Artist Directory.

Tick Tock Taylor from Hazel Mitchell

In your bookstores soon will be the first chapter book in a series of four featuring mini cheerleaders!

Written by Anastasia Suen and published by Kane and Miller each book in the All-Star Cheerleaders series will follow one member of the Glitter squad as they practice, compete, make new friends, learn new moves and most of all ... have fun! 

I know I had a lot of fun creating Tick Tock!

Being from England originally I don't have a lot of experience with cheerleading, so it was interesting to research and find out more. I can totally see why girls are in to it. I also had to learn about the moves and the holds for the black and white images in the book.

 I started out with some rough character sketches ...

 

Then I inked by hand with a dipping ink pen because it gives a lively line. You have to be quick though or you get blots.

 I added the grayscale shading in photoshop.

Here are a few more of the interior illustrations:

 

So if you have a young cheerleader or wannabe in your life watch out for Tick Tock Taylor coming soon! Looking forward to illustrating the next book n the series!

Thanks for visiting Pixel Shavings.

See more of my work online at hazelmitchell.com

or join my page on Facebook at 

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/HazelMitchellSketchbook

Call back next week to join the fun here on Pixel Shavings with Russ Cox.

Toodles!

Hazel