Hey guys!

Wow, once again “Time is a weird soup”… and somehow I’ve completely missed a month of blogging.

I am always trying to figure out how much is too much to put in one post, and when I try to break up the info into multiple posts “Life” happens and then I’m left with even more stuff to post. So why don’t we just get to the show and tell.

Zentangle

Let’s see we had two more weeks with the brush pens, and then we started weave patterns. The first week of weave patterns was all messy trial and error (no finished project), and this week we had no class because of the 4th of July holiday. We’ll have a weave lesson this week…

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Doggos

I feel bad that I didn’t post around the pup’s 4th Gotcha day. They got lots of baby carrots the days before and after their Gotcha day! Wooo!

So many pup photos, so little time… now to pick the cutest of the cutest. I get a lot of sleeping pics, but today I’ll post the ones where they are showing character and attitude 🙂 …

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Illustration Class

Now we get to the reason for all the work/life imbalance. I’m currently attending an online 10-wk illustration class. There’s lots of information and homework… it’s awesome and overwhelming at the same time. Partly due to getting a few new pieces of hardware and software adding to my learning curve. Let’s just say, I ‘need’ an afternoon nap (on most days) because my brain is full.

So the class is how to illustrate children’s books, I took it because: 1. I was curious, 2. I thought it would push me to be in a ‘live’ class, 3. I like to draw, but not sure where I want to go with it and this seemed interesting.

It turns out that there is A LOT that goes into illustrating a children’s book. I’ve also found that I have quite a few areas in my drawing knowledge that need extra attention. It’s all good, now I know where I need to focus on my education. Luckily, there are also classes I was already subscribed to that will help me fill in those gaps. But all this to say, it’s been hard to do anything else. I have to tamp down the desire to chase a grade (this class doesn’t even work that way), and to slow down and concentrate on enjoying the process.

So we were given three manuscripts that were written specifically for this class, fairytales rewritten to fit the 500-750 words that children’s picture books fall into. They were Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Hansel & Gretel… I chose Little Red.

I am not quite finished with any particular part of the process, I do what I can each week knowing that if I were to finish the book, I’d have to spend more time on each section.

Master Studies Continued

The first week we worked on Master Studies. We were to pick three children’s books to study. I chose: Invisible Emmie, We Are (Not) Friends, and Miss Nelson is Missing. I posted some of my master studies in the last post, here are a few more…

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Character Design

I chose Little Red Riding Hood, which meant I needed to figure out what Red, Wolf, Mom, Granny, and the Woodsman looked like. Here are my initial ideas, I’m still working on how they look in 3D…

Environment

I haven’t gotten very far on the environment, I’ve worked out what Granny’s house looks like on the outside. And a preliminary idea of what and where her furniture might fit in the house. I didn’t like the idea of a ‘normal’ house, so I started sketching produce silhouettes and came up with a banana/pear/gourd combo that I liked…

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Book Dummy Sketches

This week and last we started working on sketching out the book dummy. These are my initial ideas…

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So that’s where I am. I don’t know if this looks like as much work as it is. But if you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last ~7weeks, now you know 🙂

Ok, I’ve gotta get back to it. I’ll try not to wait so long for the next post.