Major Manners Has Arrived! by Russ Cox

 

 ©Russ Cox & Outhouse Ink Publishing

I would like to announce that Major Manners Nite Nite Soldier (Outhouse Ink Publishing), which I illustrated, is now available through their website or look for it at a bookstore near you. The story is about Major Manners who teaches children to brush their teeth, bath, get ready for bed, etc. all set to a cadence. The book comes with a fun cd in which the major and kids read the story in their own charming way. We are working on a new story together that will be out late next year so stay tuned for details.

Illustrating a Non-Fiction Picture Book from Hazel Mitchell

This month saw the publication of a book I illustrated for Charlesbridge Publishing' imprint Mackinac Island. The book is 'Hidden New Jersey' and it's the third in a series featuring the States.Written by Linda J. Barth (of New Jersey), it's the first non-fiction book I've worked on - and it was quite a challenge! I thought I'd share some of the process looking at how I tackled the illustrations.

The book's a 'search and seek' concept with hidden objects on each page for children to find. There were a LOT of facts to incorporate on each double spread, each featuring a different area of the state.

This book came to me in an unusual way ... the developer, Anne Lewis, saw my work on my Facebook Fan Page and emailed me to ask if I'd be interested in doing the book. Hurrah for social networking!

I received the m/s in January 2011. At this point I realized just how much research was involved - I took a big gulp. Each area of the book was broken down into a list of facts and suggestions for hidden objects. The developer suggested I write notes on how I saw the images for each page before I started sketching. This was a great idea and saved me a bunch of time ... I spent a couple of weeks looking at images for each page and making rough notes on how I saw then working as a whole. The first thing I realized was that the objects suggested for 'hiding' took away many of the options for great compositions ... so I asked if I could choose what to hide instead. I began files of images for each illustration, making sure I had many different reference and bearing in mind the copyright restrictions on images. I made my own references sketches and often merged many different views, or worked from out-of-copyright photos. This kind of book is hard - there isn't time or money to go round taking your own photographs, which would be the ideal situation!

When I felt I'd researched enough I began to make rough sketches of each layout. In this case the rough sketch was pretty much how the finished image turned out.

 

I also researched the items I would hide on the page (which are all mentioned in the 'facts').

 

I also laid out a page to scale with the hidden objects and blocks for the text.

All the rough sketches went to the developer at Mackinac Island Press for approval .. then it was on to finished pencils.

 

I worked on all the images at the same stage. There were very few changes ... just minor ones to make sure things weren't in the gutter (page fold) and that the text would fit around the image.

I worked at 150% scale and scanned all the images in at 800dpi, reducing to 400dpi in CMYK at the finished size. It was a LOT of scanning. I think people forget about scanning time ... I like to do my outline work by hand and my colouring (in this case) digitally ... so scanning and then clean up time can take almost a week or more for a whole book.

NOW the fun part ... colouring! I coloured in photoshop ... it's something I have been doing for many years. I still love working by hand, but for a project like this digital painting means I can do it in a few weeks. Otherwise the time to complete this book would have been 3 times as long! (Total time was about 4 months.)

Here is the finished image and below are the hidden objects ...

 

     And this is the finished page in the book!

                                               
One of the hardest parts about tackling this project was no running narrative. Each page is it's own entity ... although we did have a couple of themes running through the book. The kids in the canoe appear on several pages and also a little bumble bee (who is the mascot of the book and the state insect) is on every page doing something different as a little extra thing for children to find.

I also created the front and back cover art and bits and pieces for the verso and title pages.

Now that the book is out there I've been busy helping to promote the book ... which is when the hard work begins, right?

You can see the book trailer I created here ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuXJfjc-Dgo
if you want to learn more about how I did the book trailer, please visit my blog.

Hidden New Jersey is available to buy in all good bookstores or online!

Join the Hidden New Jersey Facebook Fan Page! http://www.facebook.com/HiddenNJ

Thanks for dropping by. See more of my work online  http://hazelmitchell.com

Come back next week and visit Pixel Shavings to see what illustrator Russ Cox has in store for us.

Toodles!
Hazel

Pinocchio With A Twist by Russ Cox

 

 © 2011 Russ Cox | Smiling Otis Studio

Recently I have been thinking about the story of Pinocchio and how to do a spin on such a classic.  I thought it would be interesting if kids had built him from junk that they found around the house or in a junkyard. A child has an amazing creative spirit and energy that I thought would work well for this modern take. It also reminded me of my younger days when we would build things from junk.

 

While I was sick last week, I began doodling and this is what appeared on the paper. Maybe a fever can be a good thing once in a while. Trying to think of things a group of children could find and use to make their robotic puppet, was a bit challenging. Most of the items are obvious but some of the support elements like the base of his face and lower body, I wanted to keep as chunks of unidentifiable rusted metal.

 

The faces of the children bothered me so I quickly sketched out some other ideas. Which I added to the cleaned up version of the sketch in Photoshop.

  

I decided to not add any tones to the sketch and keep the line work loose. The ellipses on the tires and other areas are not drawn perfectly on purpose in order to keep the illustration more child friendly. After years of drafting, it was hard  not to clean up those parts of the drawing.

 

Using Photoshop, I added a gray tone to establish light direction and then dropped in a purple value to pull the under painting together. 

 

I built each piece on a separate layer for easy editing. The color was built up using various brushes and textures like the background on the face. I was going for a tarnished, rusted metal look so the elements on the face stand out.

This is the final illustration. It is different than my usual vector artwork. After looking at it now, I think I will add a small cricket to the radar part of his head. Like he is whispering into his ear as the little girl looks down on him. It will tie in the basic storyline of the original and help pull the concept together.

In Pixel Shavings related news, we just mailed out our first tear sheet with bookmarks to art directors from various publishing houses. Hazel, Fred, Sheri, Debbie, John and I each did a new piece just for the promo. We think it is a pretty snazzy package that should get some attention. Fingers crossed!

Next week you're in for a treat as the lovely and energetic Debbie Ohi will share a new illustration for all to marvel!

To see more of my work, you can go to:

www.smilingotis.com
Smiling Otis Facebook Fan Page
Smiling Otis Studio Blog

Photoshop method by Fred Koehler

It's a hot summer in Florida, and I thought I'd give you a glimpse of a Photoshop method I used with this sketch of my daughter at the swimming pool.

 Choose a base color for the background and sketch on a new layer.

Under the sketch layer, add dark and light values.

Create a new layer with the blend mode "color" and bring in some selective dominant color.

Add some interesting background detail and you're all done!

 

See more at freddiek.com and check back next week to hear from the magnificent Sheralyn Barnes.

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

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.

www.smilingotis.com

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Giants at the Grocery by Fred Koehler

So my daughter and I unrolled a yarn as I was getting her to bed several months ago that went something like this: A pair of young giants are sent to the grocery store to buy sprinkles to finish their mother's cake. But things go quickly awry when the giants get there at the same time as a giggling little girl. Because young giants are particularly terrified of giggly little girls. And so they had to get that little girl to leave. By any ridiculous means imaginable.

As my daughter fell asleep, I thought about the concept. It was simple. It followed all of the rules of a successful picture book. It left an endless canvas for illustration. So I wrote it down. And then I spent the next two months working on the concept illustration.

I shifted how I wrote and drew based on feedback from the SCBWI conferences I've attended, with debts of gratitude owed to illustrators like Dan Santat, Janeen Mason, Loren Long, Paul Zelinsky, all my friends at Pixel Shavings, and editors like Katherine Jacobs and Stephanie Owens Lurie.




I worked tighter, pushed the perspective, paid attention to where the text would go and what would get lost in the gutter.


More interesting detail.


Better reference material, like this grocery storefront from the 1950's.


Particular focus on the page turn, drawing your eye to what happens next.

I'll take this concept to the next SCBWI conference, send out queries, and cross my fingers. And if that's where it ends, it's okay. We're each born with a billion ideas in our heads and a lifetime to explore them. More will certainly come.

Check back next week for something fabulous from Sheralyn Barnes.

freddiek.com

iPad Sketch Using Artrage App - by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Last time I posted about using the Sketchbook Pro app on the iPad. This time I'm doing my Daily Sketch using the Artrage app. It costs $6.99 in the iTunes store, which seems ridiculously cheap to me when you consider how much desktop art apps cost.

 As I've mentioned before, I try to do at least one sketch just for fun every day. Since I work mostly digitally, I sometimes sketch on my iPad instead of with a Wacom tablet and pen.

Because the art apps I use don't let you move layer contents, I usually start with a very rough shape layout, to make sure my drawing isn't going to run off the edge of my workspace.

Note the user-friendly left-hand display of art tool choices. In the screenshot above, I have the crayon selected.

Next, I create a new layer above the sketch and do the line art. At this point I can hide or delete the sketch.

Next, I create another layer below the line art for color. I like the watercolor brush in Artrage, so decide to select that tool. There's a bit of a lag when you're drawing, but I don't mind this for a sketch.

Above: As I add more color, I fiddle with the brush size and other settings.

I like the way the digital watercolor paint interacts with any paint already on the canvas.

Because the number of layers is much more limited in the app than a desktop art program, I frequently merge layers to make room for new ones.

Above: I use the paint roller brush on a layer below everything else to create a simple background. I add a signature and here's the final sketch:

You can find more info (and some great tutorials) on how to use Artrage on the Artrage website.

Check back next week for Fred Koehler's post!

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To see my other sketches as well as find out more about me, please see DebbieOhi.com. If you're interested in digital publishing / e-books / creativity on the iPad (especially related to children's publishing), follow @iPadGirl on Twitter.

Debbie Ridpath Ohi is illustrating a picture book by Michael Ian Black, coming out from Simon & Schuster in 2012. Represented by Ginger Knowlton at Curtis Brown.