Friday, February 10, 2012

Scribbles, sketches, and lineart, OH MY!

Phew... Time to dust off my blog and start updating again. (Is it sad that when I read this blog title, the only image I have in my head is George Takei? Oh Sulu, where would Trek fans be without you! But I digress...)

My only excuse for not updating frequently, like a good little blogger should, is that the end of 2011 was brutal. And I do mean BRUTAL. The last few months of 2011 decided to chew me up, spit me out, and stomp me into the ground as far as sleep deprivation, projects, and time commitments go. Somehow I survived, but I'd be lying if I said that I was ready for 2012 to start my year back up again. Luckily I spent most of January drawing illustrations for a class on children's illustration. Drawing for two and a half weeks? Yes please!

The following is sort of a "how I did it" sort of thing. If you have an irrational fear of educational children's books, I suggest you stop reading now. If, however, you would like a crash course in the ABCs, written and signed, read on. (Yes, this book includes the sign language alphabet, so you should totally try out a few.) We only finished one spread out of 10 spreads (plus cover), so most of the pages are only in colored layout form.

Thumbnails:


Layout Sketches:



Layout Colors:
(For now I'm just going to put the colored layout for the finished spread)


Final:


And there you have it folks! My only regrets for this project are that a) my scanner decided it REALLY disliked the colors green and purple, so try as I might to fix the colors it still doesn't look quite right, and b) I didn't get to finish the rest of the pages. I'll probably try to finish these up at some point, but who knows when I'll be able to work on them again.

And for those who want to know, I used prismacolor, artmarker, and blick ink pens for the colors. Because nothing can make the people next to you cringe like the smell of 20 uncapped ink pens in an small, enclosed workspace! ;)

6 comments :

  1. Why, because one of the characters was based on you? ;P

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    1. No... because of the TURTLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

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    2. Well, I can't argue with that reasoning. :)

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  2. I really like these :)
    The sign language idea is really cool too, but ah, they would take so long to finish! I like the princess (?) and the dog sketch :p

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    1. Thank you, Sophie! :D The cat one, I will admit, was inspired by all of your fun cat illustrations.
      They do take a while to finish, which is a bit unfortunate since they're fun to do. My personal favorites are the ones with the octopus and the frog. :) (Someday I'll upload the colored layouts so people can see them better.)

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