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

From Chicken Scratch to Final by Russ Cox

All images © 2012 Russ Cox | Smiling Otis Studio

Hello everyone! For my post I thought I would share how I developed the idea for a poster contest. Sometimes an idea gets stuck in your head and you need to pursue all avenues to see if it is a good one. This illustration was created for the NESCBWI Conference poster contest. The theme for this year's poster is "A Whole New World". The idea that hit me right away was to use Mother Goose, since she is a standard symbol for children's books and stories, using an iPad which is being used more and more by children to read and interact with stories. 

Originally I wanted to use other iconic characters from children's books. The first sketch shows Mother Goose with Max (Where The Wild Things Are), Pinocchio, and The Three Little Pigs. I liked the idea of them being crowded around the iPad but the overall composition was too busy.

The next idea was a straight on view. I felt it is too direct and lacked a warmth that was needed to tie the "old" and "new" together. You can see the little doodles on the outside of the sketch as I played with composition. At one point, the iPad was very large with the characters staring at it. That composition had too much of a "Big Brother" feel to it.

I went back to Mother Goose as the focal point and had the characters sitting around her and the iPad as if she was reading to them. This was getting better but it lacked the interaction I felt was needed and it needed everyone viewing the device.

Another idea for this concept was if I made Mother Goose a human, riding on a goose with the iPad. Compositionally it was good but then it looked like more of her using a GPS than reading on the device. In the bottom corner, I did a little doodle where she was back to being a goose and facing left. Having her facing left was like she was not ready to move forward but secretly loved the iPad. I moved forward with this idea.

I did a tighter sketch of the idea but added Hickory Dickory, along with the mouse,  to symbolize time and Humpty Dumpty to represent the fragility of embracing digital stories while being true to books and being scared of the new technology.

The above sketches where drawn separately so I could move things around in Photoshop to get the scale and placement to my liking. Instead of clouds in the background that where in the original sketch, I decided to have a book case in the background. This warmed up the tone of the illustration and help strengthen the concept.

Here is the final illustration. I was quite happy with the final and hopes it captures the theme.

Be sure to check back in two weeks for the marvelous Debbie Ohi!

You can view more of my work at:

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

Digital Sketching from Hazel Mitchell

Lately I've been working a lot more with digital sketching, getting my thoughts right onto the screen with no premeditation or thumb-nailing. Really this has been an exercise to stop me overworking, to play more and to have some fun! I have also been limiting my palette by using online palette suggestions (I use http://design-seeds.com, although there are many others out there).

It's been taking me in a different direction and got me out of my standard tools/colours/process. So I thought I would share a few of the sketches I have worked on this last month. Most of them were 15 mins to an hour and I draw on a Wacom tablet and use photoshop CS5.

Thanks for stopping by Pixel Shavings! Stop by next time to see what Russ Cox has on the menu.

Hazel Mitchell

http://hazelmitchell.com

http://hazelmitchell.blogspot.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.