perennial

It's sad to be perennially stuck in snow :(.  Being a California girl, I can't even imagine living in weather under 60 degrees lol.

This illustration was slightly inspired by an old Pixar short called Knick Knack, using some shading techniques I learned at Dan Santat's illustrators workshop.  Look Mom! I'm using complementary colors :D

Also, I finished teaching my cartoon workshop and would like to share my student's blogs.  They've come a long way (one student even started the class saying he couldn't draw) and you can tell they spent a lot of time designing the look of their blogs.  I had a blast teaching the kids and am hoping to teach the workshop again either this fall or summer.  Until then, onto illustrating my first picture book!

gesture

 

Even ants know the universal gesture for hitchhiking! 

This week's Illustration Friday is a very quick sketch since I've been busy teaching my cartoon workshop.  I drew it in pencil and then quickly painted it in Photoshop using CMYK mode.  I have to say, for me, the main difference between CMYK and RGB modes is that CMYK seems to have duller saturation.  You have to work harder to make things seem highlighted or rim-lighted.  I'm glad I'm revisiting the mode before starting my illustration work :)

In other news, Agent Robo Dumpty has progressed to ink work:

I taught kids how to achieve different types of textures and line weights with ink today, so I thought I'd use Agent Robo Dumpty as an example.  They actually helped a lot with her design. . .such as the crack in the wall and the industrial city in the background (I had a castle there before).

Next steps in the workshop. . color and then blogs!  I'm looking forward to sharing the kids' blogs with you all. . .but you'll have to wait until next week ;)

stay

Agent Robo Dumpty is hoping that staying verrrrrry still might just prevent another accident.  Here's hoping it works!  I drew her on my iPad with a new stylus and ended up with some interesting strokes.

I've been working on this character while showing kids in my workshop how to develop the face & personality of cartoons.  It's been quite fun!

You might remember a version of this egg that I did a while back:

I think the new character has a lot more depth and expression than the old one.  Maybe the robotic parts helped a bit ;)  Wait until you hear about the characters my students have created though. . .I think there are 2 zombies, a vampire, a secret spy, an evil frog, and oh yeah, a piece of superhero toast hehe.  Can't wait to see what else develops during the next week or so.

remedy revisited

As promised, I did a new Illustration Friday sketch for "remedy."  I guess this image popped in my head because Alice drank and ate odd things, thinking they would be remedies to her problems.  In the end, they just made everything worse.  Now isn't that a familiar feeling? ;)

I drew this in pencil and then used Photoshop to paint in CMYK. . .trying to get back in touch with CMYK mode in preparation for the picture book illustrations.

Speaking of color, I created this handout for my cartoon workshop.  It was greatly inspired by Dianne Mize's COMPOSE blog but I wanted the concepts on one handy page.  So voila!

Feel free to use this yourselves and I welcome any tips for improving the layout/design.

remedy

I know this is an oldie, but I still think it's a goodie.  Carefree Tuck is showing how the combination of fireworks + peace can be the perfect remedy to any problem.

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July.  I saw the Foster City fireworks show last night and we got so close that the sparks were raining down on us like hundreds of glittering stars.  Pretty fabulous.

In other news, I'm about to be signed on to illustrate my first picture book!  I can't reveal much about the story/content but I'm definitely looking forward to the opportunity.  

If I have time tomorrow, I'll try and fit in a new sketch for Illustration Friday, but no guarantees :).