Here are a few more details of one of the illustrations I’ve been working on.
I’m going to keep these annoyingly small and vague, but here are a few pieces of some of the book from the last few months. There are isolation layers, multi-spread colour and shape planning, details of the early life of a few pieces and colour and texture tests. Some stuff is carefully planned, other bits are wonderfully happy accidents.
Here are a couple colouring work in progress images. With 4G file sizes, saving takes more than a few minutes.
(more of the swan under-drawing here, in a previous post)
Here’s a little tiny sneak peek of one an entire page spread – work in progress
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here on the book progress. All the hand work is more or less done, save for some fun messy paint texture stuff that I’ll need along the way. It’s all computer work from now on. Lots of scanning, lots of colouring, lots of isolating individual elements (now I’m paying for the sheer amount of detail I’ve crammed into each illustration).
At this point I’m trying to nail down cohesive colour and treatment. There have been some excruciatingly frustrating days where nothing has gone right. Moments of sheer panic and angst. But I think–hope–it’s in hand now.
Summer has finally arrived here in Vancouver (August – it’s about time!), and I’m again spending it on the wrong side of a window. The truth is, at the end of each work day the last thing I can face is spending any more time on the computer, even to produce a quick blog post. So updates will probably continue to be sporadic from now on.
Above are a few details of work from the last few weeks – early bits in the colouring process and some of the ephemera I’ve been collecting over the last couple of years for this project.
More final line work details from a few different spreads:
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details of final line work:
I currently have 4 pieces of art in a group show at the Seymour Art Gallery in North Vancouver (Deep Cove), for the Seymour Art Festival. This is kind of a new thing for me; I don’t usually show my work.
The pieces I included are not children’s illustration exactly, but our show is themed on faery tales, reinterpreted from the artists’ point of view. Some of the pieces are delightfully dark – as original faery tales often are – and others are whimsical.
My co-exhibiting artists are Rachael Ashe, Cynthia Nugent (who is also a children’s book illustrator) and Robi Smith. Our show slot is from June 7-12th. The opening was last night and it went really well. On the final day, June 12th from 1-4pm, there are a few things for kids (a face painter and a puppet show). As well, the artists will talk about the work, and Cynthia will hopefully demonstrate some of the moving parts in her assemblages like she did at the opening last night.
Deep Cove is a beautiful place to spend and afternoon, and there is a great doughnut shop across the street from the gallery, so drop by and hope for sun!
The festival continues until July 3rd with new exhibitions each week by more artists. More details in the Seymour Art Festival brochure: (download the pdf).
Rachael Ashe posted a few photos she took on Monday, before the exhibit was hung.
I’m in the midst of the unenviable task of sorting, purging and reorganising the disaster that is my studio, in an attempt to unearth some workspace – this means I’m ripe for distraction… like scanning and posting old, forgotten work that I discover at the back of dusty drawers. Here’s a piece I did way back in 2005 for the CANSCAIP alphabet poster. CANSCAIP is an association for writers, illustrators and performers – so all three of those things are going on in the illustration.
My letter was P.
(the pony is modelled after my first pony, Duffy, partly seen in the photo on my about page.
I haven’t found the poster yet – that’s stashed away somewhere deeper in my files. But I did find it online, on the websites of a couple other illustrators who posted it alongside their letter illustrations. Here’s L and W.
Dan Bar-el, storyteller, educator, author and superentertainingfunnyguy is launching his newest picture book Pussycat, Pussycat, Where Have You Been? (illustrated by Rae Maté) this coming Tuesday, 7:30pm, May 31 2011 at The Lyceum in Vancouver (3696 West 8th Avenue, Vancouver BC).
Dan is the author of a whole bunch of books that are currently published (and worth seeking out in your local bookstore), and some that are on their way to being published (and worth looking forward to their arrival), such as the one that I am currently working on.
It should also be noted that PPWHYB appears here on the New York TImes Children’s Bookshelf.
This morning, I was so happy to learn (via 7imp) ) that Shaun Tan has won the Astrid Lindgren Award prize.
I’ve been a fan of his books and his fine art for a long time and feel fortunate to have seen him speak at the Vancouver Children’s Roundtable event a couple of years ago, where he gave a fascinating and often very funny talk about his books, his work and his, at the time, work in progress on The Lost Thing animated short. At the end he was exceedingly generous with his time, speaking to everyone in the long book signing line, and autographing with little sketches.
He can paint, he can tell a story and he has appeared to have followed his own path and interests with picture books, graphic novels and books that defy regular classification – like the delightful Tales from Outer Suburbia – and that is so wonderful. An award well won.
1 Comments on Shaun Tan Wins Astrid Lindgren Award, last added: 4/3/2011
Light table time! Transferring the last set of drawings onto strathmore paper.
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Wakelin’s whimsical depiction of time, once it has been caught, is definitely thought-provoking.
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Catching Time, a book by Rachna Gilmore and me, has been reviewed by CM Magazine.
This is a portion of one of the tight ink roughs I use to transfer onto final paper. The lines need to be really sterile so I can see them clearly through the paper. I find them really disappointing in comparison to the original sketch, because the energy gets sucked right out of them in this format – and sometimes that can be incredibly disheartening and I get scared that I might not be able to breathe life back into them in the final artwork stage. But beyond just the (required) lack of personality in the linework, this one needed some structural rework – it’s embarrassingly poorly drawn (so embarrassing that I almost didn’t want to post it). The pose is awkward, the proportions are off, there are bad, bad things going on with that arm and wrist, the viewing angle is wrong and it’s lacking the energy I really wanted.
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For corrections of individual elements at the rough stage, I usually just redraw them on a scrap of tracing paper and paste them in rather than redrawing the entire scene. It always feels like cutting corners to me, but the reality is, where time can be saved, it really should. (Recently, I bought Hokusai One Hundred Poets, and was thrilled to see that many of his sketches for his prints contain areas where he carefully cut out and replaced elements.)
But the issue was beyond just that arm. So I set out to try to fix it by redrawing the dad and child.
But it was just the same old thing – redrawn and redrawn – badly. There was some real foreshortening required, but the body just kept flattening out under my pencil and I was stuck in a repetitive drawing loop.
When things just get mired in details, I pull back and do little gestural drawings. Then I refine from there. Once I did this, I knew what I needed to do.
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0 Comments on new book beginnings ~ db as of 1/1/1900
I haven’t been posting for a while as I’ve been trapped in a drawing loop. I’ve been redrawing the same figure over and over for what feels like weeks, but really is only days. It’s a figure in one of the most spare compositions, which means that things have to be right or the whole spread just won’t work. I think I see light at the end of the tunnel. Either that, or it’s just a bit of daylight shining through the mountain of tracing paper I’ve become buried under.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. But I’m still working – it’s just been a very head-down time in an attempt to get work done. I’m loving the drawing process now and how the slight change of an angle of a leg or head completely alters the dynamism of the subject.
My desk is lost under layers and layers of tracing paper and there are bits and pieces of it taped up all over the wall.
At this stage, the rider above looks a bit creepy for a children’s picture book (although not for the ones I liked as a kid). But he won’t be skeletal when he’s done – I just find paring the figures down to bones helps when working on posing. He’ll be draped in all sorts of shaggy and voluminous clothing when he’s finished.
Things have been a quiet on the blog for the past month – I’ve taken some time off from the book to do some money making work to keep the studio lights on/pay the rent etc. Illustrator cannot live off advances alone. Well, at least this one can’t.
It’s two days from Christmas, I’ve closed down the studio for the holidays and am attempting to recover from too many late nights and weekends lost to work. So far, recovery is slow. One word – exhausted.
Part II of the book stage will involve getting reacquainted with inking after many, many months of pencil and charcoal on vellum – not that inking was ever second nature to me. The worst part is steeling myself in anticipation of the feeling of failure brought on by my inevitable inept and uninspired line work, and gathering the strength to push past that to something closer to what I’ve had in mind for these drawings for so long. I’m itching to get back to them – the roughs are all taped to the studio wall and I mentally draw them every time I glance at that wall. I’m not sure there’s anything I find more terrifying than holding a brush full of black ink over a blank, white piece of paper and there’s never enough time to just play and experiment.
Here’s a little ink colour test – the weird snowbally things are, in fact, stars. Or at least stand-ins for stars. Everything’s just sort of slapped in there to give me an general idea of how things might look.
0 Comments on new book beginnings ~ db as of 12/27/2010 10:10:00 PM
Colour and texture inspiration:
I’ve almost finished my 7th drawing – but stopped for a little bit to do a quick colour test mockup so I can get my colour process sorted. This won’t be exactly what the final illustration will look like (less gloomy, hopefully), but it’ll be the same sort of treatment.
I spent the last 4 days working on a side project collaboration with friends and that little diversion helped me figure out how to approach the colour for the book. Sometimes taking a little break is a good thing – but it’s hard getting back into the swing of drawing again. I’m on my third cup of coffee this morning – it’s a procrastination/stalling technique I employ when I’ve lost my drawing groove and am afraid to start again (I can’t draw with my hand wrapped around a mug).
It’s a dull day and the lighting isn’t great for the usual photos of the drawings in progress, so instead, here are a couple photos of studio things and of some daily visitors to the feeders that hang outside the studio window.
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The bird feeders provide endless entertainment and a good opportunity to procrastinate. Each species of bird has its own distinct personality. The house finches behave like any large, noisy family – sometimes they get along well and sometimes they squabble. When the newly fledged babies are around in the spring they, along with the House sparrows, go through an entire feeder of seed each day. Nuthatches are solitary and aggressive. They noisily chase off other birds and other nuthatches. They’re specific about the kind of seeds they like – huge seed wasters, they will toss out seeds left and right until they find what they’re looking for. Like the chickadees, they don’t eat at the feeder, but fly into nearby trees to crack the seeds. Bushtits – one of our favourite visitors, arrive in flocks up to 20 individuals. Preferring the suet feeder, they’ll feed shoulder to shoulder without argument, the extra birds hanging off the chain like tiny ornaments until there’s space. The beautiful, male downy woodpecker is a new visitor to the suet feeder. A little braver than some of the other birds, it doesn’t seem to mind us watching it from a close distance.
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I’m about 3/4 finished the 6th spread and am reminiscing about London and Paris. The swan is referenced from photos I took in Kensington Park 5 1/2 years ago and the foremost toy boat is from my visit to le jardin du Luxembourg in 2008 (when I knew I would be illustrating a story about boats and photographed as many boats as I could from Orkney to Paris). Whenever I travel, I take as many photographs as I can to build up my image reference library.
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During my wanders in Kensington Gardens, I was thrilled to discover the haunts of Peter Pan. The Rackham illustrated Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens was an absolute favourite book of mine when I was little. The illustrations were pure magic to me. When I found myself walking in the real Kensington Gardens 25 years later, I had a strange mixture of feelings: excitement, nostalgia and loss (or maybe I was just suffering the effects of extreme jet-lag). But there was still a sense of magic in the misty landscape that appeared to have changed very little from the scenes Rachkam drew, and yet, conversely, a lot, framed now with the skyline of a modern city and crossed by cars passing over the Serpentine Bridge.
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4 things:
1. I’m onto illustration #5 (above) – flying boats and a John Dory.
2. The New York Times reports that picture books are no longer a staple for children as parents encourage their children to leave them behind so they can start sooner on word books. A heartbreaking article. And not just because I’m smack in the middle of time consuming illustrations for a book right now and don’t need any more proof that my (part-time) career choice is a little poor, but because I’m trying to think of what my childhood would have been like without picture books. And all I can gather is I would have missed out on some pretty huge realisations, imaginings, creative thinking, explorations and just plain old visual delight. There was no shortage of great quality (no *cough* Disney) picture books in our bookshelves at home, and that abundance certainly didn’t stop me from devouring every wordy book in sight as soon as I could read (which was early). But nothing could quite compare to the pure emotion that illustrated books evoked, and I can still feel those emotional responses I had to those books. Ironically, I can’t properly express in words the impact that those books had on me. (I’m sure that could be directly linked to my over-indulgence in picture-based communications).
Illustrations in picture books aren’t just there to pretty up the words. They tell their own stories too and introduce concepts. And they can make you think of things another way. Take the Dory above. Sure it’s a fish, but somewhere (out of frame of this photo) there’s also a little dory, rowed by a small child. Take that words! (of course, the joke’s only obvious if one knows a dory from a perch, and a peapod from a dory – which I do, but only after carefully researching an illustrated book of wooden boats and an illustrated book of fish. Ok, I admit the joke’s only there to amuse myself because something has to keep me entertained during these long hours of drawing).
3. After unhappy thing #2, I came across this article on why parents shouldn’t forget the beauty of picture books. And that made me feel better to know that there are parents out there who aren’t ready to hide the picture books just yet. And it was also really nice of the author to link to my blog; I’m always surprised that people find me way over here in my dark little corner of the internet.
4. I’m giving it a few more days, because I can’t draw names for a prize if I don’t have any names to draw…so…here’s a reminder that kc dyer has a contest going and a copy of her new YA novel is the prize. All you have to do is comment on her guest post to be entered for the draw. Bonus draw: if you link to that post on your blog, facebook page, website or tweet (and let me know in your comment that you did), you’ll be eligible for a draw for both her books (the new one’s the sequel, so it might be good to try for the pair). I’m not going to lie; right now, the odds of winning are very good. These books would make great gifts for that kid you know who has left picture books behind for the great wide world of words. Contest closes on October 20th, 2010.
-Kirsti
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Hey Kirsti-Readers!
My name is Darby Christopher, and Kirsti has very kindly agreed to allow me a visit here to her blog today. This picture book illustration blog is a favourite for me, because of all her illustrations of animals. I don’t have any pets myself – apart from my Nan’s cat Maurice – so I like to check out all Kirsti’s cool illustrations whenever I can.
Today, I’m just back from a sidetrip to Vancouver Island, as a part of the blog tour celebrating the launch of my new book Facing Fire. It picks up the story of what happened after the magical summer that you may have read about in A Walk Through A Window, and kinda highlights my own special talent. I can’t draw like Kirsti – I wish I could! – but I do seem to have picked up a talent for slip-sliding-through-time…
If you are interested in learning more, you may want to have a peek at my new book. You can find out more about it at www.kcdyer.com
Or better still, how ’bout winning a copy as a prize? If you leave comment on this post, Kirsti will put your name into a draw to win a free copy of the new book – Facing Fire. And if you actually link to this post somewhere else [like in another blog, or facebook post or even a tweet] we’ll put your name in for the draw for BOTH of my books. So comment away!
By the way, if you’re into looking for prizes, [especially if you like making videos], check out my blog HERE at Darby Speaks. I have an AMAZING contest going with some totally fantastic prizes. And if you like twitter, you can follow all the latest on the contest and the blog tour and launches @DarbySpeaks.
See you there.
Thanks for having me, Kirsti!
~Darby
There will be a brief break in the illustration blogging tomorrow to make way for a special guest blog post. Tomorrow’s post will feature words rather than the usual pictures, be written by a time traveling, internet wandering fictional character and, if that’s not enough, include the chance to win prizes.
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I loved these colors! Beautiful palette!
thank you!