…and stares…and stares…

Roughs from a job to draw a rat (a la “Pigpen” from Peanuts).  I love the first, loose sketch of the rat, and I’ve grown to like the tighter, second rat.  But for the final, I ditched the tighter one for a looser, line piece (much like the first rat there).  I’ll post the final when it’s published.

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Sam the dog has been staying with us for over a week while the in-laws are on a trip.  She’s driving me NUTS, people!  she won’t be alone at our home and so follows me (or stands and stares at me) all her waking hours.  I can sneak out of the house to make a quick walk to the store if she’s in a deep sleep, but other than that, she’s constantly with me.  I shouldn’t rant about her, though.  She’s almost 18 and…well…  But she’s a literal ball and chain presently and my patience is short.  I probably wouldn’t have said anything except that while I’ve been typing this, she’s been standing behind me doing her low rumble, snorty, growl, which says she wants something, but I don’t know what.  At 18, though, she’s still darn cute.  She’s just more cute when she’s bugging someone else. : )

I’ve said it here before…I don’t like to draw vehicles. That doesn’t stop me, though, from taking a job that requires me to draw ‘em. I just bite the bullet and try to get better at it. And I will say, it’s not as painful as it used to be.

In the May issue of Chirp magazine’s “Diggers and Dumpers” issue, I was asked to do that two-page spread you see below. It’s a cute idea, really. I can see little kiddos gettin’ into making big truck sounds. I’m fascinated by them myself sometimes. Like, it’s amazing to see the huge semis that come through the village here, particularly the ones supplying the local grocery store. They have to maneuver the trucks down a narrow village street, then turn into a smallish parking lot and do jigs and turns and stuff to get the rear up to the loading area. You gotta have a pretty good skills to pull that off.  I’m doing good to just draw a simplified, cartoony version of these things!

Below: The spread.

Below: Larger views of page 1 & 2.

Over at the Illustration For Kids blog, we’re posting about our favorite color palettes, etc.  I used this dragon drawing for a minor example of how I use colors.  To read about that, please go here.  And while you’re there, be sure and check out what the other girls have to say on matters of illustration!

(c) RSVP/Paula Becker 2008

Aaaand…Another greeting card. Can’t you just hear the character Michael Scott of “The Office” saying, “Yo sista-mama!” in his best pseudo-bro accent? I love that show. Never fails to entertain. Anyway, with Mother’s Day approaching I thought I’d post this card. I didn’t write the copy, just did the decorative type and illustration on the front, and the hand-lettering and little bottle image in the inside. I opted to do the line work in a dark eggplant or plum color which I felt gave it an interesting dimension (whatever that means). The front took a long time for me to do. I’m anal about getting things to look kind of random and loose, and to achieve that, it mean I do things over and over until it comes off that way.  Seems antithetical, hmmm?

(c) RSVP/Ronnie Sellers/Paula Becker, 2008

Another card, here, that I did a few months ago for RSVP/Ronnie Sellers. Kind of goes with the color scheme from the last post, doesn’t it? So it’s a full-color bleed on the front, with hand-lettering and a b&w wash illustration inside. It printed well. This started out with my being given the front copy only with no finish to the thought. It was suggested that I might want to use an owl or a a guru kind of guy for the character. I did a number of thumbs and the client liked the guru sitting on the mountain. From there they came up with the inside copy and illustration suggestion. I then worked up a colorized rough of the front and some suggestions for the inside illustration and…the end results are what you see. If you can’t read the copy, it says:

Front: “With Age Comes Wisdom”

Inside: “…As well as the right NOT to use it if you don’t feel like it! Happy Birthday!”

(Character is saying, “Woo Hoo!”)

You know, I’ve done that…bicycled down a mountain like guru-guy above. It was an agonizing 20 minutes to the base. A death-grip on the handlebars and continuous shaking as I went over a grassy, bumpy terrain. Yeah…He’s having fun NOW…

When I post work on this blog, I pretty much put up pieces that I’m happy with, that I feel turned out alright and were a good experience creating. After all, this is primarily a blog associated with my work, so I’d be a big poo-head to put up pieced of mine that I cringe over. But this series of illustrations doesn’t really fit either category–or maybe it fits BOTH categories. I worked on this “The Wheels on the Bus” spread months ago, and let me tell you…I didn’t enjoy it. It had nothing to do with the client They were fine. The designer I worked with was fine, too. And the project itself, wonderful; a classic, potentially fun story to illustrate. No, it had everything to do with my frame of mind and how I opted to execute the series. So why am I posting it if I don’t like it, you ask (well, maybe you ask… I’ll assume it)? Because I’ve now seen it in print and I think it doesn’t look half bad. Okay…I think it turned out…okay. I find I’m not cringing (as much) as I was when I was working on it. So I thought I’d post it and maybe make a few comments about it. And tell me, please…Do you who illustrate/make art feel this way too? Do you do a piece for a client that you wish didn’t exist but there it is? Tell me your thoughts on the matter, please.

Below: Spread one; These are rather large (12 x 18″). I did these in Painter and while I was working on it, I kept wondering how the line work was going to look once it was in print (e.g. “Will the line work be too thick/bold?” Are these colors okay?). I’m most always amazed at how organic the digital art looks when I eventually see it in print.

Below: Spread 2; I did have to incorporate some characters to make it “all-inclusive”. so you see a Muslim girl, a Sikh boy, a boy in a wheelchair, and an over-weight little gal–along with your usual racially integrated bunch in a bus.

Below: Spread 3; Changing up the perspective and doing a slightly worm’s-eye view. I forgot to mention that I did the lettering for this.

Below: Spread 4; Ah. This one still makes me cringe some. It just doesn’t have movement like the other ones. It was my choice to have it parked at a stoplight so my own doing.

(c) Rubicon Publishing, Inc., 2008

Well, there ya go. As for my self-analysis of the project, what bothers me is that I wish I’d chosen to think more outside the box (like the image, below).

I really wanted to go wackier, less stylized with the execution…but I didn’t. I remember dealing with that at the start of this. I didn’t (and don’t) want to have to be held to an accuracy in perspective, or how a building, bus, intersection, etc. looks. Or colors. It’s even frustrating me now to think/talk about it. It’s like, many times I draw one way, but wish to draw another way. Some of my pieces, I DO do that. I let myself have more liberty in the above areas I mentioned. And I love working that way. But I seem to default to this style more than I’d like. To sum it up, it’s tough, the pathway to figuring out who you are in your art.

Nothing I can add to that!

This is the piece that Dough was referring to in the comments area in the previous posting.  I forgot about it but apparently it’s in print now so…

Something a little different but not really, if you think about it (my pen and ink style’s definitely there).  I was to work the illustration around photos of faces.  I didn’t drop in the faces in the end, leaving that up to the designer to do.  I had to work out the layout, too, to see how and where to fit the illustrations.  The designer took my rough layout and snazzed it up but making the copy slant.  It definitely made it look better and wasn’t something I considered doing.

(c) Clubhouse Jr. magazine ‘08

I’m posting some samples of the greeting cards I’ve done lately that are now in print. Below is a Mother’s Day card I did a few months back for RSVP. I think that most of this was my idea, with the client adding the copy “From your slightly spaced-out kid!” Perfect-o! It was nice that they used the color spot on the inside, too. I had some black and white versions in case they chose to not use color. I like it.

The card says…

Cover: “To the best Mom on the Planet!”

Inside: “…and on any other planet too! Happy Mother’s Day from your slightly spaced-out kid!”

(More sketches from the weekend. The below done during church.)

So I say if someone sits down in front of me while I’m sketching, they’re fair game to make it into my sketch, yes? As was the case with a couple of kids (Teens? Young people?) who came in towards the end of the church service. Both the boy and girl were ‘exotic’ in their attire–the girl was sporting a green and black striped outfit, hair spiked with green and pink tints at the points. The boy had a bit of a doo, too, though understated compared to his gal-pal. Anyway, I welcomed them with an open pen.

Below: Random, random. left side is of my view, the right just people. Lower right is the late arrival boy with the doo.

Below: Girl with spiky hair. Fun was had dolling it up in Painter X.

This past Saturday night, my husband and I attended the choir concert in Vaudreuil-Dorion of one of his co-workers. My notes are hard to read, I’m sure but what I scribbled was to say that we arrived late to the event (15 minutes or so) because we got lost looking for the place. Consequently, we were seated on the SECOND row, center (Why do they do that? Make the late folks crawl over people to get to their seats, way up in front of everyone? Some sort of punishment, I guess. I was cringing–as were the people we had to disturb to get to our seats!) Once were were seated, though, this was our view. Not bad really. The conductor was the show for us. Most of the singing was in French, and they sang several traditional quebecois songs, which are completely foreign to me. I deduced that from the reaction of the crowd as they got all excited and clappy during certain songs and medleys. Thank goodness for the sketchbook!

Women have always needed their friends for fashion advice.

A busy weekend with doing this and that.  One of the “thats” was accompanying my husband on an errand to a guitar shop in the East End.  I’m too shy to take down a guitar and play while waiting for him to do his business, but not to shy, I guess, to sit on a stool and sketch.  There’s always a wall of guitars in music stores like this so that’s where I started.  I was slightly dismayed that I’d not put my drawing pens in my purse when I’d left.  All I had were my Derwent pencils.  As I was sketching, one of the guys behind the counter asked if that’s what I was doing.  I said, yep; keeps me out of trouble.

I’m back into sketching-mode and I’m enjoying sketching several times a day.  It’s a nice change from the daily illustration making.

The weather’s been astoundingly beautiful the past few days. But I’ve been so busy I’m having to MAKE myself spend time outside. Yesterday I took my lunch to one of the parks on the lake. There are still mounds of snow here and there, and ice/snow in the water near the yacht club. Some trees are budding but my favorite willow tree is not.  That’s my junk on the table there; a plastic bag with my lunch remnants, a plastic bag holding my drawing pens, and a book about journaling.  As usual, I include my foot.  Does that make it a self-portrait?

I’ve not had much time to do Illustration Friday lately, but I really want to get back into participating, so here’s my contribution…

To small to read?  Here’s a larger version.)

A busy week, here. I’m still unpacking and reorganizing myself from my stay down south, plugging away at a number of projects/jobs that are due soon, and…wow. So much to do! But I see it’s ALSO time to do a little promoting as there are jobs I’ve done that are presently in print. So we shall start with a new book put out by Lobster Press: YUM: Your Ultimate Manual for Good Nutrition.

I had the pleasure to do a number of black and white with wash illustrations for this little charmer. Written by Daina Kalnins, a registered dietitian at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, ON. She’s written a number of books on nutrition and eating well, with this one being her latest. As I was reading the manuscript while working on the spot drawings, I felt encouraged to eat better myself! And that was before seeing the completed book with its fun layout and recipes. Below are a few of the many spot illustrations I contributed to the book:

Below: Kids cooking muffins. A recipe is included in the book for Cranberry & Walnut Muffins. Yum, indeed!

Below: An visual chart to show calories burned during activities. I can relate to that couch potato-boy at bit too much, me thinks! But once spring and summer come, I’ll be the bike-girl!

And Below: A bulk of the chapters are about vitamins and minerals and what they do for our bodies. My task was to personify them–making them into superheroes! This is Potassium and Sodium, the traffic controllers who keep body fluids in check. This one went through several revisions to get it juuuuust right.