How To Illustrate A Puppet

Being asked by Robb Killen of Killen Creations to illustrate four children's books was not only flattering, but challenging as well. You see, Robb's main character Webster is a puppet in which he uses in the Nashville Public school system third and fourth grade classrooms to teach lessons on dignity. He also has a club titled the P.O.D. Squad (People Of Dignity). Webster also has a DVD series in which all of his co-stars are humans! Therefore, when sitting down with paper and pencil in hand, my little friend was easy enough to draw, but what about his human family and friends who were written into his books? After drawing them "human-like", Robb and I decided to "puppetize" them (if there is such a word)! Here are the sketches I came up with for the first book about "Feelings" where Webster goes on a camping trip with his Uncle Charley and his cousin Roy.

2011 SCBWI NY Conference

The 2011 NY conference was such an inspiration! Here are a few photos & ramblings from the POV of a Midsouth Illustrator in the big city! 

Nashville was NOT snowy but NY was, so I got off to a late start...

  

I stayed with my daughter and saved the big bucks for the NY hotel room. I missed late night chattering with my friends... but oh well!

 

Wow! That Leonard Marcus Tour of famous sites in Children's Books was just amazing. Here are a few pictures so you can see what it was really like.

Grand Central Station- inspiration for many

The Children's Entrance to the NY Public Library

The most famous stuffed animals I know of.

Wall murals in the children's room

Original Charles Scribner & sons Building where Children's Publishing in America, began.

This fountain sculpture in Rockefeller Center was sculpted by Rene Paul Chambellan. He also sculpted the reliefs for the Newbery & Caldecott Medals!

Original home of Simon & Schuster & later, Golden Books

 

Plaza Hotel, Home of Heloise

The tour ends in the Tea Room by Heloise's Gift shop in the Plaza. Here is Genetta Adair, Midsouth RA, me, & Sharon Cameron, Midsouth Conference Coordinator. Fortifying ourselves with hot chocolate before the looong walk back to the hotel.

Next Day the Conference begins!

 The official SCBWI Conference blog does a MUCH better job than I do of talking up the details, so check it out at :http://scbwiconference.blogspot.com/
and here is another link to highlights, mostly of keynotes:http://tinyurl.com/4hrkdvo 

After a full and inspirational day we gather other Midsouthers for dinner, stories & laughter.

Clockwise: Cheryl, me, Martin, Genetta, Rebecca, Sharon

Sunday: Last day of the Conference

I WISH I had gotten to congratulate Leeza. She was gone before I could catch her. Her work is fabulous and I was thrilled for her to win the Illustrator Showcase!

Do it with Sponges

This illustration is a sample of my current illustration style.
My initial problem was to get nice smooth graduations in a monochromatic background for a page in an alphabet book. I'd come up with the concept to paint designs as a kind of "wallpaper" background with the main image, text and large alphabet letter going on top.I wasn't using any computer graphics for this particular book, I don't use an airbrush, and I was working in acrylics....not known for their ease of getting a smooth graduation in colours.I had been studying the work of a 20th century illustrator Maxfield Parrish, and found that he tackled the problem of smooth backgrounds with glazes "pounced" with a large soft brush. Since he worked in oils (i.e. a time before acrylics), he used linseed oil as his glaze medium, and layers took foreeeeever to dry. I am lucky to be living with acrylics, so I could update the technique for my illustrations. I also didn't like the look of pounced glazes....still too many marks in the paint surface

I hit upon the idea of using sponge brushes after looking at a home dec magazine, and reading about faux finishes. AHA! here was the way to get my smooth colour graduations without any visible brush marks. I bought a collection of different sponges....all the way from sea sponges (which have beautiful textures, when that's what you want) to roller sponges from the paint store to makeup facial sponges sold to apply makeup.

I went thru my paints and found a sample of Golden (brand name) Glazing liquid and I had numerous bottles of Golden fluid acrylics. Fluid acrylics have the same pigment load as regular paints, but are cut with more clear acrylic so they are the consistency of cream as opposed to regular paints which are more like toothpaste. I found that if I puddled a bit of the glazing liquid on my palette then dropped in a drop of fluid acrylics and mixed with a knife.....I got a lovely looking glaze, that would be accepted readily by the sponge.

I was working on 3 ply bristol board at the time. I ran the sponge brush over the entire board and let it dry. It bent a bit at first, but with some adjustment to the liquid load....the board dried nice and flat. I could then apply another coat if I wanted to modify the colour in some way without any lifting that occurs in watercolours. As an extra added benefit, I found that the "tooth" was just perfect for coloured pencils, without the plastic effect that acrylics normally have.

I ended up with the best of all worlds. I could get my graduations without computer or an airbrush. I could also add texture just by changing the sponge brush I use. And any additional artwork I wanted to put on top would be accepted without any problems.

Playing with Clay!

Here is an illustration in progress for the February issue of BabyBug Magazine.

I started off with a detailed sketch and I work back & forth with my client until I have the sketch exactly to their liking. We took out the shelf, added an oven, & scooped the pancakes off the floor!

Then I start to layer the clay with my millions of tools on my messy clay table

And here it is... almost done!  I can't show the whole thing until it is first published in the magazine. Can't wait to see how it looks in print!