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Finally.

I confess, there were times in the last stages when I got to thinking WHY am I doing this? Am I crazy? Could be.

But seriously. I think what I enjoy is the exercise of really "seeing". Drawing what's really there, as opposed to what you think you see. For example, when you look at an actual 3 Musketeers Mini candy bar, you see a shiny silver wrapper with red and blue lettering. It would be very tempting to just get out the Silver colored pencil and do the wrapper, then a single red and navy blue to do the lettering. Throw in some shadow and a highlight or two, and you'd be done.

But in reality, there is oh so much more to this. There are oodles of colors in the reflections - greens, reds, blues, of all shades. Then the shapes of the reflections and shadows are really complex. And there are warm and cool tones of greys throughout. When you take each 'sub-shape' and analyze it, its pretty crazy.

For example ~
This is the shiny bit top right, up close. Look at all those shapes.


And this is down left ~

I think they're really cool little compositions all by themselves. If I were an abstract painter I'd just do something like this REALLY BIG ~ and would also probably make a lot more money!
(Hmmm ... maybe I'm on to something here ... )

For a lot of my children's book work, I make stuff up. It helps to keep practicing 'really looking' at details of things to make the 'made up' things look real-er. Of course it also helps to get models or make maquettes, too. But sometimes you just have to rely on your 'making it up' abilities, and the more 'looking' you've done at things, the better chance you have of making something believable. (and I apologize for all the 'single quote marks' in that paragraph)

I will do a step-by-step to put on my site in the next day or two.

~~~~
In other news, the ALA has announced the Caldecott and Newbury, etc. award winners.
You can read the whole list here on their site.

Jerry Pinkney's The Lion and the Mouse won the coveted Caldecott. I've seen this book, and its bee-yoo-tee-ful.

This is the cover. YUM.

8 Comments on 3 Musketeers Mini DONE, last added: 1/19/2010