Friday, February 26, 2016

Picture book - Coloring pages 9-10


Well, here we are again with more illustrations of Maas in the orchestra pit. This week I was able to finish frame 9 - and I love how it turned out! The layering of color on the tuba took longer than expected, but the overall effect of the tuba and napping kitten complement each other so well I can't complain. 

Frame 10 is coming along nicely, though I'm not sure if it's finished or not. This page is going to be the scene where Maas is dreaming. I like how the color scheme turned out, but I think I'd like to add more of a 'dreamlike' quality to the page before moving on. I'm considering doing this with more shadowy purple lines, but I worry it will be too busy.


Monday, February 15, 2016

Picture Book - Starting Back Up (pages 8-10)


So! Here we are with more picture book. This week I finally finished coloring frame 8 and started the pen work for 9-10. I'm actually really happy with how #8 came out, which is somewhat surprising. I had a lot of trouble deciding how to set up the picture when I was first sketching it, and then all the variations of black were troublesome, but when it's all said and done, I think it's one of my favorite frames so far.

Here's page 9. I really like how the pen work came out, and the proportions are just what I wanted, giving a sense of scale to both the kitten and tuba. I can't wait to color it!

Finally, below is page 10, the kitten's dream. It's still half pencil, and trying to work with all those lines (straight or otherwise) has been a little frustrating.  Nevertheless, I still have high hopes for this frame, so I guess we'll have to wait and see how this one comes out.

Friday, February 5, 2016

Playing in Snow - Igloo

We've had quite a bit of snow recently, so I decided to make an igloo. :)


My method of igloo making includes shoveling the driveway into a pile for several days in a row, packing the snow down a bit, then digging an entrance. I'm always worried that the thing will collapse if I'm not careful, but I've discovered that if you leave your igloo out overnight the surface of the snow will often freeze into a shell - this is particularly useful on the inside, where it gives the ceiling a bit of extra strength. 

Conveniently, it snowed the day of this picture, so the surface of the igloo is wonderfully smooth. In addition to this, the extra snow gets packed down in the entrance. This means that the doorway is slightly smaller, but once you get in, the floor's a few inches lower, making it feel bigger inside.


The igloo's actually pretty roomy. For this picture I actually crawled in there, turned myself around, and popped my head back out, if that gives you an idea of how big it is in there. If the snow continues, I'm hoping to expand to where two people can comfortably fit inside.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Family Home Evening - Armor of God Paper Doll


Title: Armor of God Self Portrait
Size: 11 by 9 inches
For our Family Home Evening this week we had a lesson on putting on the armor of God (from Ephesians 6:13-18) and made paper dolls of ourselves. We held a discussion on how we can put one the armor of God while we designed our dolls and armor. Overall, it was a wonderful evening.

This piece is in colored pencil and pen on card stock. It feels like forever since I've drawn myself, so this was a lot of fun. Trying to get all the armor to match up with the doll was a bit crazy, but the challenge is what makes it fun, right? Another thing I really enjoyed about drawing this was trying to reverse engineer my design process for the armor. 

I realized almost immediately as I started that I was drawing heavily from some Elantris sketches I'd done a while back, trying to design Hrathen's armor. My first sketches looked very much like Hrathen's armor. So I tried to mix it up a bit - by pulling inspiration from the Stormlight Archive's shardbearers. There was definitely a moment of "why is all my inspiration from Brandon Sanderson books?!". It didn't help terribly when I realized my that my sword looked a lot like Nightblood, from Warbreaker.

So, needless to say, it was interesting to try and track down where my ideas were coming from. This post is getting a bit wordy, so I think I'll go ahead and close with my doll's base. :)