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

A Daring Adventure by Sheralyn Barnes

Spring is finally here and my thoughts have turned to greener pastures....and my portfolio. We are less than two months away from the incredibly exciting LA SCBWI conference. Which also means that I have been spending all my extra time since the conference last year trying to tighten up my portfolio with all that I have learned and absorbed from so many wonderful people in the children's book world this past year. It seems that all the valuable information and commentary that I have received has finally begun to sink in and I've had some major epiphanies about my work recently.

One of these epiphanies is just how few children (and human beings in general) there are in my portfolio. As many of you well know, it is filled to the brim with sheep. So, I decided to set a challenge for myself this month and pursue drawing children and other animals with renewed determination. 

I've made a point to hang out at the local zoo on school field trip days so that I can study and draw them both. This has been incredibly enlightening, fun, and a great excuse to get out of the studio.

Here are some sketches of some of the kids....

I also decided that I would use Illustration Friday as my catalyst for making up scenes for my mystery child and mystery animal. For anyone who isn't familiar with Illustration Friday, it is a site that gives you a new topic on which to draw every Friday and you have one week to post an illustration that embodies that topic. 

Of course then I had to come up with a child character and an animal or animals to interact with her/him.  I'm a bit of an over-thinker and like to build special relationships with all the beings in my two dimensional world, so that took a little time. Thanks to the Natalie Merchant song "The Dancing Bear" coming on my Itunes shuffle one day, I discovered my characters and their premise for meeting..... A little girl who has run away to join the circus and a performing bear who wants to run away from the circus. Then I let Illustration Friday call the scenes.

For this first one, the topic was "Asleep"

For the second...."Shadows"

I can definitely see the character development take shape in the second. I'm amazed how much my confidence in drawing the little girl grew in just one week (which is pretty apparent in the illustrations... although I am also drawn to the simplicity of the first). I love having a deadline to work within thanks to Illustration Friday. It's making me work and learn at a faster pace, which is also helping me to hone my computer painting skills. Most of all I am very excited to see what journey this little girl and bear (and Illustration Friday), are going to take me on!

Thanks so much for checking in! See you here next week when Hazel takes the stage for your incredible enjoyment!

www.sheralynbarnes.com

www.illustrationfriday.com

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 

A Dray Of Squirrels by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

As some of you may already know, I've been working on a squirrel picture book in addition to my other projects. Yes, I know there are already squirrel picture books out there! But this is a book that I -have- to write. And illustrate, of course.
As I work on the story, I've been doing a lot of squirrel sketches. A "dray," by the way, is the term used for the collective noun. And no, I had no idea until I looked it up just before I wrote up this post.

Many of my friends know that I have a love-hate relationship with the neighborhood squirrels. Well...mostly hate, but still. It's inevitable that I'd eventually want to draw them.
One of the best-known squirrels in children's lit right now is the Scaredy Squirrel picture book series by Melanie Watt. As cute as Scaredy is, it's clear that Melanie has not encountered the type of squirrels that live in MY neighborhood!

We've lost power and Internet access because of squirrels. I'm sure they do it on purpose, wanting to foil my mission to warn the world about the Evil Of All Things Squirrelly.

They pull up seedlings I've lovingly nurtured through early spring, tossing them aside to shrivel in the sun. They nip the blooms off my bulbs. They dig deep holes all over the garden as their microscopic brains struggle to remember where they buried their nuts.


I've had squirrels invade my office space, skittering back and forth along the duct work in the ceiling above my head, chewing for hours on heavens-knows-what (though some kind of supporting structure, I'm sure).

Anyway, squirrels have certainly inspired much of my artwork. While 99.9% of my work is digital, I've actually been motivated to do an actual Real Life (*gasp*) acrylics mini-painting:

Squirrels have also infiltrated my webcomics! Here's a strip from my semi-autobiographical comic, My Life In A Nutshell:

And I think that's enough squirrel images for today.
Next time: a post from the fabulous Fred Koehler!

-- Debbie Ridpath Ohi

p.s. I started a Facebook Fan Page on the weekend! I'd be tickled and grateful if you'd consider adding it to your Facebook Likes list: Debbie Ridpath Ohi, Author & Illustrator.

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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Charlotte's Web by Hazel Mitchell

This weekend it's the New England SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) annual conference in Massachusetts. Every year there is a Poster Showcase Competition. This year the challenge is to redesign a landmark children's book cover. It was hard to choose! I decided on Charlotte's Web, because it involves animals and children in the drawing as well as being one of New England's most famous books.

GULP! There is, of course, a lot of responsibility that goes with reworking an already great cover. So I apologize to EB White and Garth Williams.

I decided to go for a much more emotionally driven version in an interior to create more drama. Here's the finished product:

It is created in pencil and then coloured in photoshop. I have also tried to stay much looser on the pencil work itself to create more feeling of movement - a trend I am working on in all my current illustrations.

Here's the process ....

 

First rough draft ....

More careful drawing ... note Fern's face shape changes and Wilbur is more pig like.

This is the the finished pencil drawing, then scanned into photoshop ...

Here it is during colouring ... I work as I would on a water colour from light to dark with few layers. I prefer to use the multiply setting on airbrush mostly and dodge/burn tools.

 

After feedback from crit friends I worked on the eyes, changing them back to my initial idea that she is glancing back. Also I got rid of her marshmallow mouth (see finished piece at top of this post). I also enhanced the shadows on the right with an extra layer.

The text was created separately in pencil, traced from a printout of a setup of the text on computer.

On a separate layer I dropped it in position and used the overlay and screen settings on brush to add colour and highlight the webs.

Here is the wonderful, wonderful original! I can't hope to come close to this classic, but I very much enjoyed working on the piece and will be interested to hear the reaction at NESCBWI.

Thanks for dropping by Pixel Shavings. Did you receive one of our postcards in the mail? If not please send us a message at pixelshavings@hotmail.com and we will get one in the post to you.

Call back next week to see what fab illustrator Russ Cox is up to!

Toodle Pip!
Hazel

see more of my work online at

http://hazelmitchell.com

copyright Hazel Mitchell 2011

Taking it Easy by Sheralyn Barnes

I've spent the last month or so trying to sharpen my computer illustrating skills. I've really wanted to learn how to make the process feel more like real painting and thanks to some great advice from (the amazing illustrator) Will Terry, I've learned a few tips that have really opened up the whole world for me. In fact, I've been a bit obsessed, so that's a good sign. It's a technique in Photoshop that involves creating your own personal brush textures and then using layers, allowing you to construct a painting on the screen just as you would on a canvas or panel. I'm eating it up and just loving it. Many, many thanks to Will Terry and his videos for introducing me to it! I still have much to learn, but am so excited to start my next piece.

I do have to apologize, because...yes....it's another sheep. As I said before, I'm obsessed...in many ways. My plan was just to play around with the technique with a sketch that I had already done. So I just grabbed this sudsy guy out of the sketch files and started playing. 

...and playing

...and many many hours later, I now have this.

 

So, in a nutshell, that's what I've been doing with myself for the last month.

Thanks so much for checking in again. I promise to surprise you all with something non-wooly one of these days!

Be sure to check in on Hazel's lovely work here next week!

www.sheralynbarnes.com

©2011 Sheralyn Barnes