Been in a bit of a funk lately, probably because we're now hitting that mid-semester mark where my teacher's nagging comments begin to drain all will and interest from me for whatever project I happen to be working on at the time.

I finished a rather large (16x20") watercolor piece about a week and a half ago, but I'm not totally satisfied with it, and that's why it's not up online yet. It was an attempt at a more realistic style, but it just didn't quite have the vibrancy I was looking for, and that was discouraging, too. I may yet salvage it with colored pencils, but right now it's sitting on my desk while I figure out what to do with it.

I was also beginning to despair because I wasn't getting much done with my illustration independent project-- I liked the lineart for the piece, but when I started painting it all fell apart, and even colored pencils couldn't do much. I began to realize that watercolor was just not a good media for this project: the paintings were too complex.

So I was quite frustrated, but after thinking about things for a few days, I began to feel better. For one, I sat down last Thursday and did a fantastic drawing for my next watercolor piece, based on an old sketch of my "Four Seasons" kids:


Then over the weekend I was thinking about illustration and said "fuck it." My only goal in re-doing the Mink project was to have several images with consistent characterization to use in a portfolio. But you know what? I can achieve that same goal just by having a series of images of Mink and Puppy playing. It's not like I haven't done a million sketches of that already.

So that's what I did today, and I'm very happy with the results:

So, at long last my black and white storyboard sketches for Children's Book Illustration are done. I finished them up Sunday evening, but it took a bit of time to scan them all in and piece them together.

( The drawings! Image-heavy, of course. Dial-up users (do they even exist?) beware! )

Critique was about what I expected; most of the comments I got were about issues I already was aware of (the text in the boxes needs to be resized for the final; the butcher's cart should probably be shown in the image with the pig; the single page with two images instead of a spread is a little awkward, etc.)

Honestly one of the biggest things I couldn't believe was how few people were done or even close. We still managed to get six people up for critique today out of a class of thirteen, but several people had very rough or otherwise unpolished sketches, or hadn't even pasted their text in. Seriously, what is everyone doing? I know some people had the watercolor paintings to finish up as well, and maybe didn't have as much time over weekends to work, but really? We got like three weeks in class to do these. :/ It is a puzzle.

So, finagling with digital images and the lightbox this weekend, and then I'll go with coloring. I think I may do a sort of "sketchbook" or travel book approach, using (once again) my paper texture with a sort of "ink wash" coloring technique over it. That should go nicely with the postcard effect.

So last night, for the first time in awhile, I actually spent several hours sketching. This started out as work on a commission for Saro, but... quickly spiraled out of control into a summon swarm of kawaii.

( Results below. Warning: May contain toxic levels of cute )

Then today I spent most of the afternoon painting, trying to finish off my still life of Noir for critique tomorrow. Masking fluid made my job SO much easier this time around, oh my God. ;_; I don't know how I would've done all that fabric without it. It's just about done now, but I'm taking a much-needed brain break, eating Chinese and maybe watching some Firefly in a bit.

And since I never put up the previous still life... the promised steampunk-penguin-in-goggles, leading an army of paper cranes: