Emarily aimed carefully before she launched her favorite marble. She couldn’t lose this one to her pesky little brother.
Illustration Friday: Launch
This is my entry for Illustration Friday this week. The prompt is LAUNCH.
Another illustrator friend has turned me onto a watercolor technique for Photoshop. I’ve spent the better part of an afternoon learning the tools. I am using my own coloring page to become familiar with the style/media.
I’m still not happy with the brushes (Photoshop) since they don’t work the same way as my favorite traditional media sable brushes. But the texture and washes are close to what I would see in a real painting. I’m still hunting for something to mimic the blooms I get working wet-on-wet, but this technique is the closest I’ve seen so far.
I’ll post my colored version in a few days, when it’s done. I’d love to see your colored images. If you send me a scanned file of less than a meg, I’ll put it up on the blog, too.
Happy Coloring!
I have had so many requests to do more alphabet pages, I couldn’t refuse.
Since the lesser-know Goddesses and Gods series take such a lot of research, I thought I’d start off with ritual tools. Those I can do without hours of research and get them up sooner, too.
Thank you all so much for being my loyal fans, this would be absolutely no fun without you and your wonderful comments.
I send out coloring pages to let people know about me, my art and my children’s books. Please help support my efforts by spreading the word or buying any of my books.
Please stop by any of my social networking sites to leave me a message (here is good too!) and let me know how you like the coloring pages. Also, if your budding artist colors one of these pages, send me a jpg (under 1MB) and I’ll post it on a future entry in my blog.
Click on the thumbnail image to download the full sized page.
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The prompt for this week’s Illustration Friday was mail. In keeping with my creature of the day daily doodle, I made an angry mailbox.
This time of year seems to make our mailbox into a beast. So many catalogs and fliers and what-not seem to fill it everyday. Some days it is so stuffed, it is difficult to get things out without something tearing. It as if the mouth of the mailbox has sharp, pointy teeth. I even have the scratches on my hand to prove it.
This creature also marks the last page in this sketch pad. I have a brand new daily doodle book waiting for me already. I got one with a soft cover this time, and it looks as if it should fold open flat so the shadowing I’ve been dealing with because of the spiral binding on the old one when scanning will no longer be an issue. It would be nice if I could start the new book on the first of the year, but I don’t think I want to take the next 2 weeks off from my creatures. They are fun.
It’s Saturday, so I should be taking the day off, but I have deadlines that need to be met and places to be later, so as soon as this post is updated, I am pulling out a sketch pad (not the doodle one) and working on character studies for my picture book. The main character’s looks and visual personality are eluding me with this story. But on of my crit partners just said to scribble until something happens and the girl shows up. I also want to work on some new portfolio pieces and some patterns for licensing. Yeah, a slow day. Go ahead. Laugh at me, I’m laughing at myself.
Later on we are heading in to see the new daughter-in-law graduate from college. Afterward we will have dinner at Pi (a gluten-free pizza place!) with her and her parents who are in town for the graduation. We didn’t get a chance to spend time with them while they were in town for the wedding this summer and they told K they’d like to get to know us better. Should be fun.
Illustration Friday prompt for this week is ‘double.’ In keeping with the goat theme of the last few sketches, I offer up two goats. Because double the goat is double the fun.
Remember the rule for the daily doodle challenge is each day’s doodle must be done in ink, no erasing and be complete in 30 minutes or less.
I am more pleased with my goats then previously. I think it’s time to pick up the pencil and start scribbling pirate ideas down.
Later on today I will have to buckle down and write my article on graphic novels in the classroom which will be my first post (Aug 4) on the middle-grade group blog I belong to. From the Mixed-Up Files of Middle-Grade Authors launched about a month ago and almost immediately made news in the kid lit industry. The latest news to report is the blog being picked up as a feature link on Scholastic Book Club‘s Facebook fan page. With all this scrutiny from Big Name people in the industry, the pressure is on me to come up with a stellar entry for my debut post. Talk about stress!
