Highlights Foundation: Advanced Illustrator Workshop 2012

I promise the sunrays are not photoshop.  :)

This was the most amazing workshop I have ever attended.  Faculty: Floyd Cooper, Eric Rohmann, Kelly Ann Murphy, and Ruth Sanderson with Special Guest: David Weisner, Donna Jo Napoli, and Neal Porter.   The interaction within the group included the faculty, and the hands-on demonstrations truly helped everyone to grow as artists and storytellers.  Each of the presenting artists worked in different real media: watercolor washes, oil washes, mixed media, printmaking, and shared time saving tips that lend well to publishing.  Even though I am currently working digitally, I wasn’t going to deny myself the opportunity to dive back into real media and traditional art techniques.  In fact, several times I was able to reexamine my own digital techniques.      

Imagination *IF

Highlight’s Advanced Illustrator Workshop was fantastic!  This character came out of the quick character development sketch during Kelly Murphy’s painting demo.  (She’s a wonderful artist and teacher!)   The first thing that came to mind was that I couldn’t find my hairspray that morning, and if this illustration gig doesn’t work out for me, I’ll take up bird watching with my birds’ nest frizzy hair.  Kelly uses a mixed media technique that builds up the values first and then layers in color.  I often refer to her artwork/website because of her use of color, tones and mood.

Even though I paint mostly digital, and did so for this illo, I cannot dismiss the need to become reacquainted with traditional mediums.  The computer is just one tool that mimics most art techniques.  We worked with watercolor washes, acrylic, oils glazes, pastels, pencil, and woodcut demo for printmaking throughout this workshop.  I’m so thankful for this experience with a wonderful group of talented artists.  To keep this experience going at home,  I decided to repurpose my illo into a book cover.  I thought this would be a fun fictitious book cover.  I hope you like it and feel free to comment. 

I’ll be posting more about the workshop soon.     

Have wonderful day drawing and creating. 

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.

NEW NEWS

I received some wonderful news yesterday!

  ** Silly Frilly Grandma Tillie (Flashlight Press, 9780979974687) is the WINNER of the 2012 Gelett Burgess Award for best Multi-Generational book!

Silly Frilly Grandma Tillie (Flashlight Press, 9780979974687) has been selected as an Accelerated Reader book. The Accelerated Reader software, run by Renaissance Learning Inc., creates quizzes for the books, helping teachers in 57,000 schools in the US and over 1,000 schools in Canada. 

Silly Frilly Grandma Tillie (Flashlight Press, 9780979974687) received a fantastic review from the Midwest Book Review (May 2012 issue of "Children's Bookwatch"): "a high-spirited children's picturebook featuring outrageously wacky color artwork… An excellent read-aloud pick, Silly Frilly Grandma Tillie is playful in tone, yet the dialogue is sufficiently advanced to encourage little ones who have mastered easy reader picturebooks to take the next step forward." The review was also provided to the Helen C. White Library's "Cooperative Children's Book Center" (University of Wisconsin, Madison) where it will be made available to school and community librarians throughout Wisconsin's public school systems and community libraries, and has also been provided for inclusion in the Cengage Learning, Gale interactive CD-ROM series "Book Review Index" which is published four times yearly for school and public library systems.

Above information was provided by Flashlight Press. 

You can read more at www.Flashlightpress.com or go to my website to find links to the author, Laurie A. Jacobs, and other information.

JUMP *IF

SINK *IF

Who is Silly Frilly Grandma Tillie going to show up as next?