This Week in Perpetual Motion 10: Tag!

Ahoy! It's Friday again and this week I'm meeting my self-imposed deadline at a more respectable time than last with another fun-filled piece of children's book-type art! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Tag! My tribute to what seems likely to be the first game of human civilization. Who among us doesn't love a good game of tag? (full disclosure: I actually didn't care for the game much myself between the spring of 1979 and the summer of 1981 as I was constantly "it" on account of my being an awkward lad with a big head and short legs making it nearly impossible for me to catch my opponents. Overcoming these obstacles, I did later regain my love of the chase.)

Based on another book concept that I have, this piece was a lot of fun to finally bring to life. Initially I didn't have any ideas for the finished look of the illustration but I knew I wanted it to be somewhat different from most of my other work. The one word that came to mind was "texture", so I tried to bring in more textures than I usually do. At my day job I've been doing more work with colored line work rather than black (for some reason people associate black lines with "cartoony" which apparently adults think is bad, even though we produce things for kids, who love cartoons. That's a whole 'nother post.) So I did it here and I really liked the result.

In other news, I spent a lot of this week trying to figure out my next promo mailer.I was planning on just putting together a small packet with a few color copies, maybe some postcards. Then I was listening to the fantastic Big Illustration Party Time podcast (hosted by Kevin Cross and Joshua Kemble) episode 39 in which the hosts, along with Thomas James of Escape from Illustration Island (an equally fantastic podcast that I have mentioned before) were discussing, among other things, possible alternative revenue streams for illustrators to pursue. Kevin Cross had mentioned the idea of printing up some quality art books that could be sold to fans but could also do double duty as a portfolio that could be sent to clients. This got me thinking about maybe doing something along those lines but on a smaller scale. So what I'm working on now is a small, printed book, digest sized with maybe four pages in it. While it would still be just a few samples it might be a more cohesive, well designed package as a book. That's the theory anyhow. I had hoped to have something to show, but I'm still designing it.

I'm thinking about doing them through maybe a print-on-demand outlet like Ka-Blam (as mentioned by Mr. Cross on BIPT) or finding somewhere I can do a short print run at a decent rate. If anyone who happens across this page has had good experiences with any of the various printing resources out there, feel free to drop me a line.

This Week In Perpetual Motion 09: Chicken Nugget!

Back on track! For the most part, I'm about a half hour shy of midnight, but it's finished! This week's piece is a mocked up cover for a book concept I had the other day. The title of the book, in case it's hard to read on this low res version is, "Chicken Nugget: The Greatest Dog in the World Ever by Chicken Nugget". Without giving too much of the plot away it's basically the autobiography of a little dog named Chicken Nugget who is so full of himself that he really thinks he's the greatest dog in the world. Judging by the expressions on the faces of the townsfolk, his is not the majority opinion. I don't usually place type on pieces like this but I think the composition would look really odd with out it, as it's kind of central to the whole thing. As always, any crits and comments are welcome.

For the week ahead I plan on continuing sketches and prep work for the next Princess Candy book as well as dive into some much needed self promotion. Hopefully in next week's post I can share what sort of sample packet I'm working on. It's my intent to send a decent package to some publishers that I'd really like to work with. I'll let you know how it all goes down.

For now, it's totally bed time.

Thanks for reading!

This Week (and last) In Perpetual Motion 08: Horseshoes & Hand Grenades

When I decided I would start doing this weekly exercise to build my portfolio I told myself that I would post something even if a particular week went awry. I said to myself, "Self, if we're going to do this, we've go to do it warts and all... good, bad and even ugly. 'Cause that's how life is self... it aint always pretty. You an' me gotta keep it real."

When I had this discussion with myself, I didn't actually think this was going to happen on week two.

I could go in to some litany of excuses, but who wants to hear that? The one legit reason I have is that paying work has to come first and that's basically what happened here. I had some gigs that I had to work on and I didn't have enough time for this image. So, when I had some computer issues, I didn't have the time to recoup and bust this sucker out.

That's why I blew it on Friday.

As to what happened this weekend, I have no idea. I've been trying to get this thing done and colored up but I just haven't been feeling it. So after many false starts and missteps on the colors I'm deciding to pack it in and call it a night. Doing so gives me that slammed with a 90 mph dodge ball in the gut feeling too, but sometimes it's not worth slogging through a piece just to get a crappy result when you can get back to it later with a clear head. Sad but true.

The above image is of the finished inks and represents the last phase of the project in which I looked at it and thought it was ok. When I get it finished up I'll post it.

Next week, something completely different. (ie. a finished piece and maybe more coherent thoughts)

Oh Johnny!

You're such a card.

Pencil and sharpies.

Black and red to be precise.

Work was slooooow today.

This Week in Perpetual Motion 07: Deadline!

Alright, so this is my first Friday since determining that I would post a new, finished piece of work every week with the intent of building my portfolio and keeping this illustration business heading in a forward motion. Did I get the piece done? Sure did, and I'm really pretty happy with it. Check it out:


Using my "kid in a bee costume" character again (cooler name forthcoming), I decided I would turn him into something of a young superhero-type starring in his own series of middle-grade graphic or possibly prose novels. That's a market that I think the type of work I like to do fits well in. The above image would be the cover illustration to one of his harrowing adventures. I'm thinking about some black & white images for the interiors that would accompany the text, if the book were to go the prose route.

Process stuff... My process isn't really anything revolutionary but I always like to see this stuff from other artists so perhaps someone may enjoy this part.


1. Thumbnail - This rough image is about 2.75" x 3.5". I just drew it up quickly one day, thinking about situations to put our hero in. Didn't spend a lot of time on it, just tried to get a sense of the composition.

2. Pencils - I worked at my intended final print size of 6" x 8.25". I would usually work at least a little larger than the print size. These were only supposed to be slightly tighter roughs, which is why I worked smaller, but I kind of got into the drawing and finished them up. I scanned them in at 600 dpi so I could blow it up to the size I would have probably drawn it at when I converted it to a print friendly 300 dpi.

3. Inks - Technically there isn't any ink involved here since I do the line work in Adobe Illustrator. I place the pencils on their own layer and set it to dim the image 50%. Then I start an "inks" layer where I use a combination of the pen tool to trace some of my lines as paths and my Wacom tablet and some customized brushes for stuff like the woodgrain. I'm using it more for the other lines as well, but I'm still learning with it.

4. Flat Colors - After the line work is done I create a layer under the "inks" layer and label it "colors". I do all of the flat color this way, using the pen tool creating shapes. It's probably time consuming to do it this way, but I've been doing this since art school where I was more comfortable with Illustrator and vector art than with PhotoShop. It's weird but I just like to do it this way. Anyhow, you'll see that the color isn't totally flat as I did put some shadows on the figures. Part of the aesthetic that I'm going for is a cell shaded Saturday morning cartoon kind of feel where the somewhat flat characters pop off of a more painted looking background. Which brings us to PhotoShop.

5. Painting and Texture - After I've finished the flat color I export my Illustrator file as PhotoShop document, preserving all the layers. I then open the file up in PhotoShop and start adding textures and painting some shadows and highlights (mostly on the background elements). This piece doesn't have much of that , just some painting on the ship, some texture on the sail. I used a scanned paper texture that I placed over the flats and adjusted levels until I got it where I wanted. I also used the gradient tool in the sky to throw some color variations in there.

That was about it. I'm pleased with the results. If anyone reading this has any comments or critiques please let me know. Feel free to give an honest opinion, I can take it. I'm always looking for ways to improve things and sometimes there can be glaring problems that the artist can't see because they're too close to the piece. So fire away.

Next week I'll hopefully have another new piece. I say hopefully because I'm getting started on paying work, which obviously has to be the priority. I think I can fit something though, so look for that on Friday.

Thanks for stopping by.

Sailing Can Be Fun!

Unless, of course, you're our intrepid hero at this particular moment.

Here's a little sneak peak at a work in progress. This is the pencil drawing I did for the piece that I'm going to have finished for Friday.

I hope you love it.

Thanks for looking.

This Week in Perpetual Motion 06: Moving Right Along

So hey, internet, we're just gonna forget about September, ok? Between a new baby, two older kids, a full time job, finishing up Princess Candy book 3 and the inability of my brain to put together any coherent thoughts during that time, September and most of October were a bust as far as regular updates go. Not what I had hoped for this little experiment, so I'm going to try to get back into the swing of things now.

In the time between finishing the third Princess Candy installment and getting started on the next I've been trying to update my portfolio site, work on new pieces for said portfolio and build a contact list for an upcoming mailing. 2009 has been pretty busy so these have all been things I unfortunately neglected. I've also managed to do some writing for a web comic project that I'll probably be announcing early next year. Anyhow, I haven't just been sitting on the ol' duff.

You can see some of the fruits of my labor here at my portfolio site, updated with a smattering of newer images and a bunch of golden oldies.

Since I'm focusing my attention on the children's market one of the best resources that I'm using to build my mailing list is the 2010 Children's Book Writer's and Illustrator's Market book. If anybody out there is reading this and has any other suggestions please shoot me an email or comment below.

As for new pieces, I'm trying to finish some up before I start on the next Princess Candy book but honestly, I've been in a bit of a rut. I have plenty of sketches of pieces that I need to get moving on but I'm over thinking them, wondering if they're the right pieces to market myself with or if I need to change up my style a bit. Consequently, I end up paralyzing myself with these considerations and don't get much accomplished. At least that was the case, until yesterday when I was listening to Thomas James' fantastic podcast, Escape from Illustration Island and he was interviewing Jonathan Woodward who runs the blog Zero 2 Illo. Jonathan has been using Zero 2 Illo to document his transition from a freelance graphic designer to a freelance illustrator, putting it out there as a resource for other aspiring illustrators. During the course of the interview, which was great (as always, Escape from Illustration Island is a phenomenal show), Jonathan explained that he blogs about his work schedules and posts deadlines for himself because if he didn't, he might not get the work done. Hearing that, I decided that some self-imposed deadlines would be just the thing to get me to pull the trigger on these illustrations.

So here's the skinny... each week I'm going to work on a new piece, and post it here every Friday as my Perpetual Motion report, column thing. I'll use that to go over the process, post sketches and whatnot, chat about other stuff I've observed along the way. Hopefully, the issues of style and marketing that I've been mulling over will work themselves out through doing the work rather than through all my navel gazing. Even if each image isn't star search material, I should end up with some nice additions to the portfolio. Sound like a good plan?

That's it in a nutshell. If you're still reading then I salute you for your tenacity and fortitude. In the future, there will be fewer words and most certainly more pictures. For now, I leave you with this space kid.

Illustration Friday: Flying

When you're skating really fast, it give you the sensation of flying. Ok, it's a stretch, but maybe these kids just used flying to describe how speedy they were, like, "Man, I was totally flying across the pond! It was wicked!"

That's what I would have said when I was a kid. Actually, I'll say that this winter when I go skating.

Librarian 4 Hire: Super Sweet Yeti Edition

Finally had the chance to finish up this piece for my children's book, Yeti 4 Hire. (you can see the original drawing here. ) Ok, so it's not an official book yet, but this is one of the samples for the submission packet I'm putting together. I'm still working on the book dummy and tightening up the manuscript, so it will be a while before I get it out the door. I'll just keep making time for it between the paying work.

Surrounded!

Robots don't stand a chance.