I’ve been helping to make Christmas card this week. My client had two “Nutcracker” characters ready: the Girl (what’s her name? in the book she was Marie, I think…I’m not sure about ballet version) and the Nutcracker. I was to make background for them. Characters are digital, so my background had to be digital, too; I’ve had occasion to practise painting on computer screen.

It’s the beginning of “The Princess and the Goblins”, a  fairytale I’ve found in Project Gutenberg. Crayons and several colors of  inks.

“Mom, he took my teddy to train up on it!” Happy Halloween, everyone.

One more Zodiac sign, for a friend of my friend, who happens to work in the radio. And he’s  Taurus, of course.

Lavatera Thuringiaca, the proper English name is tree mallow (or so says Wiki). Only a few flowers  have survived that long in the garden, and this is one of them. I have brought them home, outside is too cold.

watercolor

Now the summer is over for sure, most leaves are down on ground and it’s dark just after dinner.  A lot of forest animals are drawn this week.  This bear fits best to my present environment. Even though we don’t really have bears around; one was seen in Ojcow last year (30 km from here) but most likely he had come from mountains with a short visit.

Shayla has changed her mind: shopping cart may be lonely, but her book’s cover must be merry, colorful and optimistic. So here it is, totally redesigned.

Can you remember this story? It’s about a town mouse who comes to visit his cousin in the country, and invites him to town. This is wonderful fairytale and I have no idea why I have never tried to draw it before.

Ink and crayons

One more illustration to the story about shopping cart who liked to play tag. Everything goes very slowly;  sun is shining – last sunny days this year! and I just can’t sit at the desk all day. I have done a thing or two in garden instead. I’ve digged out two old bushes today (OK, my husband helped, but only with bigger one; the first one I did myself)  and I have put into ground three new ones.

Halloween is close, I’m getting ready. Inks and watercolor. This one will be for sale, it’s no commission.

I have quite a few black-and-white drawings by now and soon I’ll be coloring them. This one illustrates the first chapter.

This was last moment to paint, the  dahlia is already half-dead and falling down. This weekend I’ll dig it out, I guess. Roots go to the attic for winter.

watercolor

Little Sunday drawing.

crayons and ink

Shayla’s book is already advanced enough to think about cover image.  Shayla decided on the front cover there will be poor homeless shopping cart with his luggage in a blanket on the stick (please, don’t ask me what are shopping cart’s favourite possessions! I don’t know, and I think Shayla doesn’t know too! But this way the cart does look lonely, doesn’t he?). The homeless cart should be looking at the racing event poster. In the end of the book the cart and racing car are friends. Here’s the first sketchy version of the scene.

ink, pencils

More animals… The author wants an elder moose with longer hair, so this moose stays with me. I guess he’s thinking about the end of summer.

Today is 20th, so I have finished background and listed this mouse on eBay.  20th is eBay day. It helps to have fixed date, or some drawings could wait forever, unfinished. Interesting: lately eBay gives me points for my seller’s activities. A month ago my score was “average” and now is “above standard” (?). I list 3-4 drawings every month, same way and almost always at the same price, so how have I made this progress? Just like my dad was promoted to higher rank as a reserve officer every ten years or so, without any effort on his side. Being reserve officer was absolutely last thing he was interested in, but every engineer was registered as one. Nothing could be done about it. I suspect he would stay on the list even if he had run away to West Berlin, jumping through the famous wall.

ink, pencils

Many more animals this week, forest and farm ones. One of stories is about unhappy Palomino horse who hated its job in circus. I should read this to Basia, she would be deeply moved. No grass! And so much hard work! Basia consideres trotting to be hard work, and she has already forgotten all about galloping. At her age she’s much too wise to hurry up.

Here’s my first drawing of poor Palomino.

 I’ve had interesting afternoon. Three sketches are made, my first attempt to draw new book’s characters: this hare is one of them. Now I’m waiting to see what will happen.

Long time, since I was here! Most of the time I was drawing the mysterious Halloween-style illustrations that I’m not allowed to show anyone. I lock door when I draw. OK, just joking. There are only four illustrations comissioned so far, but there’s interesting developement of this project: the story will be published as pop-up book, too, and now I’m adjusting my illustrations to “3D” version. In practice I need to redraw them completely,so that each page would fit the template with cutting and folding lines I’ve drawn before (results of home tests are positive, so I hope this will work!). Lot’s of trouble with this pop-up book, but it’s fun. There are also plans for a new book about animals. I don’t know much about this book yet, but so far I like what I was told about this job. LIttle animals drawn in Milne’s books style! Sounds promising.

The Panda clipart is a little extra thing I did last week, but it seems that this drawing will stay in a drawer. No, not in drawer: it’s going to decorate my blog.  So I haven’t lost time.

I’ve been doing changes to Shopping Cart illustrations  lately; Shayla had the feeling the cart should be more realistic. I took care of my abandoned garden, too. Amazing, under the layer of weed I’ve found most of my seeds, doing very well in the shadow. The exposed ones suffered more during July heats. Finally, I have drawn a picture for a contest. Contest is for fantasy book illustration, and main characters are: elf girl in pink dress, an evil toad, gnome and tarantula (the last two were optional). Not a bad set! I just had to try. Here’s original drawing, the contest holder got edited image. This time it was mostly about the sky; sky area was meant to be rather smooth, to make a good background for text.

watercolor pencils and paints

The tenth spread in Shopping Cart Story. Racing car’s still complaining, but it’s getting better.

I have a friend in Warsaw who’s got sometimes very unusual ideas about watercolors I might paint. These are not typical comissions, each one is a challenge! This year’s challenge is a dancer photographed at rather special angle. My friend provided me with a reference image, of course. Just one little thing was wrong. The dancer in the photo was all black: her skirt, her tights etc. And my friend wanted a white dancer. So there was room for imagination in this project, after all.

Big watercolor drawing, about 45 cm high. For me this is giant format!

Another picture for Shayla. The racing car is seeking help. There’s a program about good sleep on the radio and they say some people sleep 4 or 5 hours and it’s perfectly normal for them, they just should stop to torment themselves trying to sleep longer. What a wonderful natural talent! I sleep eight hours, or nine, if nothing happens to wake me up. My life is going to be much shorter.

And so I have drawn entirely new mermaid. I think this one fits better to author’s description. What will come out of this, nobody knows.

Working on a scene featuring sad little mermaid sitting lonely on the sea floor. This is first drawing I have made, but she should have a shell neclace, as I’m told, and here I can see no place for neclace… so I guess this sketch is not final. Still very hot, but there’s been a storm tonight and it has helped a bit.