Black and white Illustrations

When you have boxes and boxes of paint, crayons, inks, pastels, felt tips and glitter glue in every colour imaginable, why would you work in black and white?

Colour is so much more fun and lets face it black and white is hard!

But most illustrations in books are black and white so not to include some in your portfolio is limiting the types of clients who look at your work. 

During #inktober last year I identified I could use a little more time on the subject and created a drawing everyday with black ink and wash. Which then led to my current work, whilst I can't yet tell you all about, drawing dogs in black and white (SO MANY DOGS)

I wouldn't by any means say I am an expert in this field. I'm actually going to a class on the subject tomorrow to figure out how to strengthen my monochrome skills. Never stop learning hey?

After starting this year with the goal to improve on my portfolio that was fairly well received last year there is no way I can't include more black and white pieces.  I started with this one, because, well ...unicorns!

So, excuse me while I only sharpen my black coloured pencil for a while. 

Scanned and Digital Colour

I've been scanning my illustrations on a white back ground and colouring them digitally for a while now. For me it gives me so much control to reposition and edit the drawings. Sometimes independently to the background and whilst I feel pretty confident in creating characters it makes it so much quicker to be able to swap out a different expression and change the weight in the drawing.

Digital colouring also offers a great level of freedom over the whole look of the image. I've been experimenting with texture, either scanned or created with one of the many brushes available in Photoshop. The images files are increasing in layer size and it probably makes you a little lazy with designing your layout until you get all the elements in together but I'd sacrifice that to hours of worry that you had the perfect smirk only to not be able to reproduce it. 

This is an example of an entirely coloured and scanned image. I really wish I could make the vines over the top of the image more defined and change that bird's positioning. This method has it's perks too, you retain an original rather than a digitally only version. I just scanned this one and deleted the dull white paper background. Maybe I'll revisit this drawing at another time. For now I think I'll stick to digital placing the colouring and keep my option open.

Happy World Book Day 2017

Fairytale Creatures, #animalalphabets

You know how i like to join in with a twitter project well I was watching the alphabet of fairytale creatures and although i didn't have time to do the full bunch i had a go at these 4. I also tried to assist in thing for one for after U  - those end letters are hard. There should be a magic zebra called zoe or something. Here they are 

T-Three Little Pigs

P -Pinochio

U- Ugly Duckling

R- Rapunzel

E- Enjoy

Drawing Children

Most of us illustrators can tell you of what their portfolio is lacking, whether its locations or black and white work or ,for me, children.

Children's literature often has animals or little people as the focus of it's storyline. I used most of December to draw all sorts of animals in various Christmas activities but I was waiting to tackle the harder subject of kids. I concentrated on school kids because I also didn't have any school settings in the old folio. 

There is a nursery school nearby that have bright green jumpers and I always liked the thought of a green school uniform when I was a kid (I had yellow and maroon in secondary school, yuk)

Basketball in the playground

Quiet reading

Sports Day

SaveSave

Animal Advent Calendar 13 -24

Animal Advent Calendar 1 to 12