Happy February everyone!
My January was a busy one. If you read my newsletter in December you’ll remember I was stressed about a deadline for my new picture book. Well, I can happily say I made the deadline after a few trials and tribulations. I’m now in the limbo of waiting for feedback and then I can get into final color. I can’t wait to be able to share more about this book!
In other picture book news, I started working on my final colors for “The Farm To Our Table”. I’m going to have to juggle this book along with the other one but I think I’m getting the hang of scheduling. I’m actually still very new to being a children’s book illustrator in all honesty and I know juggling things is a BIG part of the job. If you do want to find out more about “The Farm To Our Table”, Gnome Road Publishing shared a little bit about me and more about the fabulous book written by Sarah Rowe you can check that out here ! I can’t share much art for the book quite yet but I can say I finished the first spread and very happy with how it’s turning out you can have a little sneak peak below.
Onto turning 25,
I was lucky my deadline was before my birthday so I had the week to sort of relax. I had a lot of mixed feelings about turning 25 I guess you could say I’m really feeling that quarter life crisis. Well I’m very happy about the things I have achieved in my career. I can’t help but compare myself to the other people my age or people even younger and where they are compared to me. I know comparison is the thief of joy and man is that true, so I’m very much trying to keep in mind that things happen exactly when they are supposed to. On a much lighter note, I had a very nice birthday hanging out with family and friends and I plan on hopefully going to Disneyland this month as a belated celebration!
Some personal art
I haven’t had a chance to do much personal art but with my downtime this week I did manage to create a new illustration for the kidlit art postcard event that happens the first Thursday if every month. So, I’m going to share a little bit of my process for that since I’m pretty happy with how it turned out!
I started with a mood board this time which I swear I need to do more often because every time I do I end up really liking the result. I knew I wanted it to be in a classroom so I pulled some classroom references and some kids doing crafts. Then pulled a couple illustrations that gave me the vibe I wanted to go for. Here’s a link to Kris Easler’s work and Anoosha Syed ‘s (foxvilleart) work be sure you check out their fabulous inspiring work.
Thumbnails
I only did one thumbnail I probably should’ve done more but I wanted a composition that would work with my name and info at the top and that first one I really liked.
Final Sketch
I played around with the kids a little bit but I settled on some poses I liked. I think it looks pretty authentic to kids making Valentines.
Final color
I struggled with the color a bit, at first I was going with more realistic school colors like I’m those references above. But, I really wanted an overall warm pink and red feeling like Valentine’s Day so I went on Pinterest and found some Valentines themed color pallets and worked from there and this is the result.
I think it was a fun illustration! I used my brushes for all the texturey goodness lol. If you want to grab them you can do that here all the support on those this past month has been amazing. I had a small burst in sales from a tweet that did pretty well and I’m just so happy people are enjoying them.
Well I think that’s all from me for now…
Thank you for reading! I’ll see you next month!