Lonely *IF

 

Her gaze feels a bit lonely or pensive, deep in thought.  I wonder what she’s thinking, and if it is the same thing she was thinking yesterday.

This is a pencil drawing I scanned a while back, but for the first time I’ve added a badly need pattern to her kimono.  This was just my first test.  It’s a simple pattern I created myself after watching a Corel Webinar by Carlyn Beccia demonstrating her technique for creating patterns and oil painting techniques in Corel Painter 12.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls2CEf8iduU&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL0855FBB78AA1604F  .  Also Carlyn's book just came out: Digital Painting for the Complete Beginner.   http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Painting-Complete-Beginner-Carlyn/dp/0823099369 , which I also bought.

This is a great demo and book if you are like me.  I have been learning this program as I go.  I’m not a beginner, but I have many gaps in understanding this program, and I also use Photoshop to check color and crop before I send off my artwork or print it.  Painter 12 is a great digital tool for creating traditional feeling artwork.  I love it.  I use it to recreate my gouache, colored pencil and salt technique on paper for children’ illustration. Sadly, I have also limited myself to all of the other wonderful tools and brushes available.  I’m in a self-teaching mode as I need things, and Carlyn’s demo helped me easily add this wonderful pattern feature to workspace.   It will be great for my next project!   

Suspend *IF

Ok, it’s pushing the topic, SUSPEND, but Dorothy isn’t about to suspend her trip home.  She wants to go home now.

I thought I’d post a work in progress clip.  I get crazy with detail sometimes.  I didn’t do a lot of character sketches for this one and jumped right into playing with the color and texture. (This is me off the top of my head.)  It’s still an underpainting  for the most part as I layer in more color and values.  There are still too many middle tones and Dorothy’s hair is still getting lost, but I like the overall green hue.  I plan to do a series of classic story characters for my portfolio and eventually work out some ideas for a middle grade story I plan to illustrate.   I think I could push the “edginess” with my next illo.  I’d like to get some MG book cover work in the future.   

Hope you like it.