The Pineapple Diary

Illustration Friday - Baby

Don't cry baby onion! From a licensing group I created last year - I've never really put any time into finding a home for all the baby fruits and veggies, maybe soon!

What came in the mail...

Samples arrived yesterday! These are magnetic list pads and sticky-notes I designed last year that were picked up and began selling in stores this February. While they're not the first products I've designed to hit the market, they are the first I've licensed under my name and not under my old company. I hope it's the first of many successes in licensing for me. I've spent the past few weeks developing new art for licensing and getting submissions ready. It definitely takes me a day or two to switch my brain over from children's illustration but I do find it quite fun (and liberating!). Once I get all the samples (more listpads to come I think) I'll do a little giveway!

Children's Illustration Show, Portsmouth NH

I'm very excited to share the news that I'm part of a group exhibit of Children's Book Illustrations opening next week at Kennedy Studios in Portsmouth, NH! I will be showing work along with the very talented David McPhail, Robert Squier, Teri Weidner, and Tess Feltes. The opening reception is May 9th, from 5-8pm. This coincides with Art 'Round Town, a collection of galleries in Portsmouth that have openings on the same Friday so you can take a little tour.

I hope some of you living in the area can come and meet all of us. There will be originals, prints, and sketches to see (and purchase). The show will up for one month. Let me know if you plan on coming and I'll be sure to look for you! I'll be taking some photos at the opening to post on the blog for those of you who cannot make it.

Keeping busy

I'm in the home stretch of illustrating a book. Above are some tiny snippets. I've been painting 1+ pages a day 7 days a week to meet a deadline. So far, I'm pretty happy with what I've been doing and look forward to being done and seeing the book as a whole. Luckily, I think I won't have to wait too long for actual copies of the book, it should be available this Fall. Oh, I'm also looking forward to getting a day off! And getting back to projects that have been lingering for almost 2 months now. I've definitely learned a lot through this project - that tiger was my favorite thing to paint so far!

Nerd Bird Postcard

Yes, just one more time... here's Nerd Bird, postcard front and back, on order now:

I'm not sure the poor fella could fly with such a big head. But he's good on a bike!

Nerd Bird!

I'm still waiting for my inspiration on a little b&w spot for the back of this postcard - hopefully a new day will bring a fresh idea!

Lemon Fizz, revisions

After lots of fiddling around, here's what I came up with. Thank you for all your comments and feedback. The polkadots were too crazy! But it felt empty without anything, so I did add the text in - digitally and tonally so hopefully this doesn't look too busy as I know you were all thinking. I also softened the background colors a bit and reduced the degree to which Becky's head broke the border - now if I can only get my printout for my portfolio to look JUST like this!

Lemon Fizz, final touches

The Lemon Fizz ladies are almost done. Click for an enlarged version. Should I add in the text labels (see previous post - I'll do it neater than that rough version shows!) OR should I add a tonal polka dot pattern in the background? Hmmm....

Lemon Fizz: Color study

The straight lines in the background were just too much - I think these softer lines make the piece more uniform. I need to put this aside, get some feedback, and look at it fresh tomorrow! I am a little nervous about painting the text into it but it feels lost without it... With any luck, everything will get resolved and I'll be painting soon!

Mouse / Tablet / Mouse

I'm sharing a snippet of a little job completed a few weeks ago. I created this digitally, but still tried to make it look like my gouache work. I'm pretty happy with it overall - and I feel a little more comfortable with the process. It sort of seems inevitable that I'll end up illustrating on the computer, at least for educational work. With a little practice I surely could shave some time off my painting process.

I started out by sketching (and sketching and sketching - see below for just one of several pages I did trying to figure out what the mice should look like and what poses to put them in, click to enlarge):

Once the sketches were submitted, revised, and approved...

I moved on to 'tracing' the basic shapes in illustrator. This step might be overkill but it helps me get the smooth curves I like in my work. I also left some weird areas in because I knew I could fix them more easily than tweaking curves in illustrator (see below):

Then on to photoshop to make the edges look a little more like they came from a real brush rather than a plastic nub on my tablet! Then fur, highlights, shadows, etc. (see detail below):