The Sketchblog

My marathon illustration run is almost over and it couldn't come too soon. I am so tired. Here's another one. Enjoy!



Too tired to type more, must sleep.

I'm sure it doesn't make much sense right now, but I just started coloring so it's not supposed to. It's been too many consecutive late nights so I will leave this one undone until tomorrow night.

I had to take break from the other story for a day so I did this one last night. It goes with a poem about a guy who was in the shower too long and came out looking like a raisin, obviously. I had been working on it for about an hour when I realized that it looked more scary than funny, which isn’t such a good idea for a children’s book. I had to change course and am pleased with the final image.





Here’s what he looked like before I realized how hideous it was. Eek!

I change my mid halfway through illustrations all the time, I guess I’m just not the kind of person who sees the final product in my mind and I’m always surprised at what I end up with.

This is the screenshot I did right as I finished it. And I even had three minutes to spare before midnight, just enough time for a celebratory burrito!




I had to do a closeup of the little kid because I thought he looked cute. I actually really, really like this page. Hopefully that will limit the amount of tweaking I do, besides, it is a huge file. I have one page left to do for this story, the preceding page actually, that I hope to post tomorrow, or more likely, Thursday. Hope you enjoyed it!

So, I timed myself and it took longer than I thought! Five hours just to do the coloring for this page. That doesn't include the time I spend sketching up the idea and at least an hour to ink it. I would guess I would have to add two hours on top of that. That's seven hours before I start tinkering endlessly. Yup, I already changed the one I finished last night. I went back in to add some freckles. After I finished the next page I had to go back to yesterdays to add some more highlights to his hair. This is the last time I will post this page, I promise!



Okay, I'm done with this one. Really!



Next page. This one went quickly, and I'm really pleased with the way the water turned out. My initial sketch for this page was done a while ago and now I think the layout could be stronger but, well, one can only tweak so much.

Woo-hoo! Only two more pages to go!

I do these screencaps from time to time because everyone seems to love them.



Here's the inked drawing after I have scanned it in, bumped up the contrast to get rid of any stray pencil marks and fixed anything that I goofed up earlier.




Next I start laying down the base colors. I always get nervous during this part because it makes the drawing look terrible with all those flat colors. I choose mid-range tones so that I can add layers of color, both darker and lighter, to give it a lot of depth. That's why his hair looks so pink but, trust me, it will get better.




I create the painterly look with a by adding light 'washes' of color in photoshop. I am still expanding my palette to get a more realistic tone to my characters but I guess that is a never-ending process. Here you can see what it looks like after painting for a couple of hours. I erase endlessly and undo even more until I get it to where I like it.




Done! I tweak endlessly, making his eyelids smaller, etc. I use a lot of different techniques to get the textures for the road, clouds, trees, hair, etc, but most of it is done with custom photoshop brushes I have made over time. I try to do less detail work in the background to make sure it doesn't draw you away from the focus of the picture. I might go back and lighten the background a little more, but I'll let it rest for now.

I have had so much time on my hands that I have been sawing through the illustrations for my childrens book. I reworked most of the first few pages, (I need to get this thing done so I will stop tweaking with it) and finished two more, quite a feat considering how much dang time it takes to do one of these. Now I'm curious, I'll try to time myself on the next one.

Here's a big image dump to show you what has crossed my desk in the past few days.



You've seen this one before, I just reworked it a bit- namely I added a pattern to the wallpaper.



Again, just reworked a few details and layout.



Reworked the bug and the bear.



New asteroid and added the dreamy border. This one looks a little sparse to me but that should be fixed when I add the text.



New border and added some more trees.



This one was fun! I worked it up from a sketch and did the color a couple of days ago.



I just finished this one last night. I'll post a few screenshots to show how it progressed.



This is a brand new one, done for a different story.