I have truly neglected this blog for some time now mostly because video tutorials seem like such a faster way to learn digital painting and I am just not up with the technology yet. I do have some old school step by step posts planned for creating illustrator patterns. Stay tuned...

In the mean time, I write almost daily over at my regular blog: The Raucous Royals

Throw on your petticoat, grab your parasol, button up your britches and rush on over to Picture Book Junkies to enter to win a FREE signed copy of The Raucous Royals.

2 more days to head over to Scandalous Women and enter to win a copy of The Raucous Royals. Entering is as easy as losing your head in Henry VIII's court. Just comment on the Jane Boleyn post and...Voila you're in.

Reversing numbers is a peculiarity we all share. Even reversing letters happens sometimes in our addled brains. If we do it often, we have a fancy name for this phenomenon…dyslexia. But what about artists who reverse images in their mind?

Lets call it imagelexia because it makes me feel much better to give a name to my mental defects. I don’t know how it happens, but every time I draw hands, toes…even faces they get reversed on paper. (In my head, they looked perfectly normal.) Luckily, my critique group has caught COUNTLESS paintings of poor people with their thumb on the wrong side of their hand. My image of the Changs for Who Put the B in the Ballyhoo? had gone through proofing and legal and all the other smart people who are supposed to catch mistakes, but no one had caught the reversed thumb except my faithful critique group.

One of my critique group members, Penny Weber always draws expressive, beautiful hands. She has inspired me to do better. No more excuses. No more laziness. I vow to improve my hands. (Toes are another matter because feet really gross me out) And you faithful readers of this blog (all 3 of you) should also share in my quest for better hands…

Here are some tools:

1. Here is a website with 206 images of hands in art. Pure hand inspiration.

2. Drawing Dynamic Hands by Burne Hogarth
This is one of my favorite books for drawing hands in motion.

3. Here is a short video from Matt's Illustration demonstrating how to draw better hands. Matt advises to draw the thumb last. Makes sense.

Let me know if you have other tools to get those digits looking pretty.

Sorry for missing last month’s post. I have been caught up working on my next book, I feel better with a frog in my throat, the final cover for the fantastic Houdini Series by Thomas Lalicki (shown here) and lastly my new history blog ....which I swear you will love even if you hate history.

I do have a really quick Painter tutorial and it’s one that I think everyone can use.

Painter has many hidden tricks that go unused, but one of my favorite is right in the Color Sets palette. Have you ever opened that sketch to be painted and been stuck as to what color palette to use? Well, if you are really lazy (like me) you can steal colors from the masters. For this tutorial, we are going to steal from Caravaggio.

1. If you don’t see the Color Sets palette – select WINDOW/ COLOR PALETTES / COLOR SET. The Color Set looks like a bunch of swatches similar to how Photoshop displays them.

1. 2. Open an image up that you feel has a good range of color or the correct colors.
3. 3. Go to the Color Set , Click on the little arrow to the right, Select “New Color Set from Image”

Painter will now make a color set from that image. That’s it. Paint with Caravaggio’s colors.

This color set might not have every color that you want. You can also add colors to your color set by clicking on the little color swatch add symbol at the bottom (circled in red here)

You can also mix your own colors up in the mixer pad and then again click on the little arrow to the right and select “ New Color Set from Mixer Pad”

Let me know if this is helpful. And if you don’t have Painter, then just download a 30 day-trial to check it out from the banner on the right.

Author Brad Meltzer will definitely peak your interest with his video on bad book reviews. I prefer eating a gallon of ice cream.

I am a little late posting this, but a special thanks to everyone who participated in the KidzBookBuzz Blog tour for the release of my new book, The Raucous Royals. I especially enjoyed the fact that I found so many amazing blogs in the process.

Thank you to:

1. The 160 Acre Woods
   
   
2. All About Children’s Books
   


3. Becky’s Book Reviews
   


4. Cafe of Dreams
   


5. Dolce Bellezza
   
   
6. Fireside Musings
   


7. The Friendly Book Nook
   


8. Homeschool Buzz
   


9. Hyperbole
   


10. KidzBookBuzz.com
    


11. Maw Books Blog
    


12. Never Jam Today
    


13. Quiverfull Family
    


14. Reading is my Superpower
    


15. Small World Reads
    


16. SMS Book Reviews

I have been going through the new features of Painter 11 this week and have decided my favorite new tools are the resizable mixer pallette (now you can make your mixer pallette REALLY BIG) and the Real Chalk brush. (it picks up your tilt like real chalk medium). I am going to be posting a new tutorial soon. In the meantime, I have a tutorial coming out in Painter magazine and I will post a link to subscribe as soon as I know which issue.