Here’s my contribution to the illustration group, Story Book Bugs today. Go and buzz on over to the Story Book Bugs’ site to see more illustrations celebrating the 12 days of Christmas.

Sketch 12-17-10, originally uploaded by Tracy Bishop Illustration.

Just a little sketch on a Friday night.

If you are a professional illustrator, illustration student, or an aspiring illustrator, you HAVE TO visit Holli Conger‘s blog. For the entire month of December she is posting illustration business tips. It’s a rare opportunity to see what it is like to run a successful illustration business.

I’ve been enjoying these posts and learning lots of stuff from it. It’s like having your personal illustration mentor. Thank you for all of this information, Holli!

This illustration is my contribution to a new group illustration blog called The Story Book Bugs. I’m so honored to be part of this super talented group. The contributors are: Courteney Pippin-Mathur, Diandra Mae, Johanna Wright, Leeza Hernandez, Lynn Alpert, Michelle Lana, Summer Macon, and me!

We’re kicking off the new group blog and the holidays with illustrations of the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” I’m the first one up with a partridge in a pear tree.

Make sure you subscribe to the Story Book Bugs blog so you won’t miss all of the wonderful illustrations that will be posted daily for the Twelve Days of Christmas. Enjoy!

iPad-sketch-10-1-10, originally uploaded by Tracy Bishop Illustration.

Experiment on the iPad using the Brushes app. I was trying to get a watercolor look. Sketching on the iPad while watching tv is one of my favorite things to do now.

Here is another project that I completed over the summer. The client was going to open a brand new preschool in Portland, OR and wanted a logo and website. Since the preschool is located right by the Wildwood nature trail, she wanted the logo to reflect how close to nature the school is physically and in its curriculum.

This project was fun. Since the school wasn’t even open yet there were no photos to work off of so I got to illustrate everything. My goal was to keep the message of “close to nature” at the forefront while still emphasizing the fact that this is a place for young children.

I wanted to give the client a website that was easy for her to update so I built it using WordPress. That way she wouldn’t need to call me unless she needed a redesign or a change in the structure. She can change any of the text on the site and the news section is a blog so she can easily share information with parents. Go and check it out at www.wildwoodnatureschool.com!

I recently partnered with Aeolidia, a Seattle based design agency specializing in e-commerce design work for small businesses, crafters, and artists. Aeolidia’s websites and logos are known to be heavily illustrative so it was a perfect partnership for both of us.

My first  assignment from Aeolidia was to do a logo design for Bella Celestials, a startup company that makes items for babies and children using eco-friendly materials. The client wanted a dove motif and to convey a soft, hand-made feel.

Here is the final logo. It was a super fun job!

The really fun thing about this logo was I was able to hand letter the logo. I really wanted to have a flowy, hand crafted look so I wanted the entire logo to be illustrated.

Usually, when I first start on a logo design project I do LOTS of sketches:

It’s only after I come up with a few sketched concepts that I move things into the computer. Here are some of the early ideas for the Bella Celestial logo:

At the last minute I decided to attend the Alternative Press Expo 2010 (APE) this weekend in San Francisco. This event showcases indy comics and tons of artists with self published art books.

I’ve heard about how wonderful it was from friends for years so I decided that this was the year I would visit.  More than anything this event was inspiring. It’s so invigorating to see so many talented artists putting themselves out there. There was just so much good artwork there that you couldn’t help but be inspired to create. Of course, it was also a great chance to see many artists whose blogs I follow in person and buy lots of art prints.

One of the favorite things I bought was an original watercolor from Pixar artist, Jennifer C Chang. It makes me so happy to look at this!

Now I need to start making more of my own paintings!

When illustrator and Pixar enthusiast, Jerrod Maruyama, e-mailed me to contribute an illustration for Pixar Times’ Toy Story tribute I immediately said yes! I grew up with Toy Story an now my son loves it too. Toy Story 3 was the very first movie we took him to watch in the movie theater.

The theme that I chose to illustrate was “The Next Generation Andy” since my son’s name is Andy too

You can see the finished illustration at the Pixar Times blog.

I thought it would be fun to post my process here.

Step 1: Very rough drawing in Photoshop.

Step 2: Clean up the drawing a little

Step 3: Roughly adding the values in Photoshop

Step 4: Print the drawing onto watercolor paper (Fabriano hot pressed 140lb) with the values and start painting with gouache

Step 5: Done!

Thank you, Jerrod for the fun project!

Palo Alto Jr. Museum and Zoo is a wonderful place for kids to play with hands-on science exhibits and to see over 50 species of animals in Palo Alto, CA. When they called me early this summer to redesign their signs for the zoo area as part of their renovation project, I was very excited. They wanted signs that would make parents feel like they are taking their children through a picture book. Of course, I was on board with that concept.

It wasn’t until later that I was also asked to do the illustrations for these signs too. In the end, I designed 60+ signs and 30 watercolor illustrations. It was an enormous amount of work to do both the design AND illustrations for this project but in the end it was so much fun.

I will post more photos of the signs once they’ve all been produced and installed into the zoo. In the mean time here are a few pictures and illustrations.

For more illustrations that I did for this project, please visit my Flickr page.

Birthday Card, originally uploaded by Tracy Bishop Illustration.

I went to my friend’s little girl’s first birthday today. I totally forgot to buy a birthday card so I made this really fast before the party this morning. Her mommy and daddy were happy. I guess even if it’s last minute, a hand-made card is appreciated.

The image on the right shows what I’ve painted and scanned. The image of the left is what it looks like after I played with coloring it in Photoshop.

Daily Sketch 9-16-10, originally uploaded by Tracy Bishop Illustration.

Quick pencil and watercolor sketch. Photo of sketch taken with iPhone and some color adjustments were made on iPad. I’m being totally mobile here!

DailySketch 09-15-10, originally uploaded by Tracy Bishop Illustration.

My first sketch done on the iPad!
I read How to Train Your Dragon (the movie picture book) to my son tonight so I was inspired by the little Viking in that movie.

Today’s quick watercolor.

Quick painting for the Illustration Friday topic: Stargazing.

Felt like drawing a red-headed girl like Anne of Green Gables. Painted this while I was waiting for another painting to dry.
10 minute watercolor sketch on cold pressed Arches watercolor paper.

Well, I guess technically it’s Wednesday since it’s after midnight. But let’s not quibble over details. Here’s my quick watercolor sketch for Tuesday.

Watercolor on Arches hot press paper:

I’ve decided to do warm-up sketches and try to post it every day. I just needed to do something to loosen my hand and brain up before I started working. My rule is just to do anything and post it, whether it’s good or bad. Another rule is to not spend more than 15 minutes on the sketches.

So here is today’s sketch done in Photoshop:

Just a quick sketch to warm up.

Done in Photoshop.

One of my favorite watercolor supplies are porcelain palettes. Compared to plastic, the colors just glide better, the colors don’t stain them, and they’re just so much prettier.

Unfortunately these palettes can be a little on the expensive side at the art stores sometimes. That is, until I stepped into Cost Plus World Market and found a section full of porcelain “palettes” that are super-cheap! Those little saucers you see in the photo are 99 cents! The slightly larger one is  $1.99.

Woo hoo! You know where I will be shopping for palettes of different shapes and sizes from now on.

I’ve always been a cold pressed watercolor kind of girl. I love how I can layer all the watercolor pretty heavily. I love how forgiving the surface is for an impatient watercolorist like me.

But I’ve always wanted to get better at painting on hot pressed paper. Lot of my illustration heroes (Marie-Louise Gay and Chihiro Iwasaki) use it and the colors just glow.

So, in between the crazy busy-ness of work and life, I’ve been trying to practice.

I experimented on Arches hot pressed paper first and I just couldn’t get anything right.
Then I remembered that I had a block of Fabriano Artistico hot pressed paper. It was instant love! I still need to practice a lot more but here are my initial experiments.

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By: Tracy Bishop, on 5/10/2010
Blog: Tracy Bishop Illustration - Children's Book Illustrator (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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I finally got my illustration portfolio site up! There are still a few things here and there that I would want to change but let me know what you think!

Please check it out at www.bishopillustration.com.

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By: Tracy Bishop, on 4/12/2010
Blog: Tracy Bishop Illustration - Children's Book Illustrator (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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One small but important aspect of your marketing/personal branding efforts online is creating your avatar. Every social network site and blogs use one. This small bit of square image can do a lot to help people develop a relationship with you if you keep two simple things in mind.

1. Keep your avatar consistent across the board.
By using the same avatar no matter where you go online helps people easily identify you whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, or a comment that you leave on a blog.

Useful tools to make sure you can have the same avatar even when commenting on other people’s blogs are services like Gravatar and your Google profile for commenting on Google Blogger sites. The  majority of your fellow illustrators use Blogger.

2. Use an illustration representative of your style as your avatar.
As illustrators we have a leg-up compared to a lot of people in other professions out there about what we can communicate using our avatars.
By using your illustration you can:
1) show that you’re an illustrator,
2) show what kind of illustrator you are,
3) show what medium you use.

That’s a ton of information that you can communicate to people just by using an illustration instead of a photo for your avatar!

My personal experiences with avatars:
I really felt the difference between using a photo and an illustration for an avatar on Twitter.

<—-When I first delved into the world of social networking a couple of months ago, I used photo like this.

While it was appropriate and professional, you couldn’t really tell anything about me if I followed you or replied to one of your posts on Twitter. You would have had to take the extra steps of clicking on my photo, reading my profile, and possibly visiting my website to see that I am a children’s book illustrator. Then after all that maybe you would decide to follow me on Twitter too.

Isn’t that a whole lot to expect a person to do when you know there is a way to skip all those steps to communicate what you’re about instantly?

<—When I switched to my illustration avatar, I immediately felt the difference in the rate of replies that I got and the number of people who followed me on Twitter.
People now could easily see that 1) I’m probably an illustrator 2) I illustrate in the children’s book style  3) I use watercolors. All that information without even clicking to see the profile information.

So illustrators, make your avatars work hard for your marketing and personal branding efforts. It’s a small and easy thing that you can do right now to improve the first-impression you give to the world out there.

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