Color Sketch

Color sketch for a book cover.

The Raptor Clans

My eight-year-old daughter has written her first novel, The Raptor Clans: Life of Leaf Clan. We'll be publishing it through Dawson Publishing, and I promised to paint a cover for it. This is the first rough.

I Used To Be A Spy...

I found it humorous the way a recent news article played up the Mystery and Intrigue of how the alleged Russian spies sent secret messages encoded in photographs posted publicly online.

The alleged Russian spies recently arrested by the FBI are accused of encoding messages into otherwise innocuous pictures, marking the first confirmed use of this high-tech form of data concealment in real life, experts say...


Although computer scientists have theorized about the existence of this communication technique for over a decade, this is the first publicly acknowledged use of the technique.

Programmers do stuff like this just for fun, and you can learn how at Ben Nadel's blog.

And spies probably do, too. (Drawn in ArtRage2 with drybrush and grain filters added in Photoshop. That gave it kind of a nice watercolor look.)

Supergirl

I'm not sure if it's still permissible to draw a female superhero who doesn't look like she's posing for a men's magazine, but here's a drawing of Supergirl.

Creating a Scene with Photoshop

When I was working on my picture book dummy last summer, I took tons of photos of my kids and they were very patient. Most of the illustrations were of impossible scenes, so I would create a mock-up in Photoshop as a guide for my drawing and painting.

I'm still trying to find a publisher or a literary agent. I wanted to find an agent and avoid the slush pile, but I'll be sending out a new wave of submissions to publishers this spring.

Color Experiment

Splash!

I took the digital plunge yesterday and bought a Wacom Cintiq.
I got the Cintiq 20WSX model.
I couldn't wait to get it home, unbox it, hook it up and test it out.
I had a little issue hooking it up because I lost the adapter that came with my iMac (doh!) and then I found out my iMac didn't have the capability to support a dual monitor setup. I downloaded a patch and everything is in tip-top shape.

So I drew the drawing above on my Cintiq tonight.

Special thanks to Tom Richmond and Darrin Bell. for their advice on buying a Cintiq.

If there's enough interest, I may post a video or two of me drawing on the Cintiq and a review once I break it in.

For the record, I'm not saying I'm completely moving over to working digitally, I still love sitting at my drawing table with my paints, a fresh sheet of watercolor paper and a big ol' jar of water. I see the Cintiq as being another tool for me to draw with...I have several coffee mugs filled with brushes, pencils, pens, etc. and now I have a Cintiq sitting among them.

Illustration Contest

I'm challenging YOU!

Enter the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators Illustration Contest!

It's free and you can win a year's membership with SCBWI or a SCBWI t-shirt!

Deadline: Friday, June 1st by 4 p.m. Pacific Time!

Click this link for contest details!

Alien Attack

Just trying something a little different. Still trying to do at least one digital illustration a day.
By the way, the Alien's aren't attacking all of Earth, just Halliburton.