Butterfly Book - 4

These are the final two images in the Butterfly Book. The butterfly dries out his wings in the sunshine as the clouds clear and then flutters away to search for nectar among the field of flowers. Here again I utilized repeated butterflies from the other spreads, though flopping and rotating helps disguise that fact. It doesn't often work out to do re use elements without being obvious and short changing the product. In this case it made sense within the framework of a project and it sure was a time saver. 

Here are the previous posts relating to this book project:

Butterfly Book Drawings 1

Butterfly Book Sketches 2

Finish Paintings 1

Finish Paintings 2

Finish Paintings 3

Butterfly Book - 3

In these two pieces, I needed to show the contrast of the butterfly sheltering from the rain and then starting to dry out his wings after the storm passed. As I worked through sketching out this project, I decided that, in to make it easier to execute, I would reuse or modify any elements that made sense. For instance, at least one sky was cropped and reused, two butterflies were flopped and made a second appearance, and in these two illustrations, I made good use of the leaves that the butterfly is using for shelter. I kept the leaf layer separate from the sky which made it simple to swap the rain for a nice cloudy sky. Then I made some modifications to the colors and added a few highlights to the leaves as the butterfly from another spread made a command performance.

This type of planning made the execution of this project go much faster and only really observant kids (and adults for that matter) will ever notice that some of the elements repeat. Although this example is the most obvious repeat, it made total sense in the context of the book, so I was okay with it.

It's tempting to mine your digital archives for things that might speed up a project, but whenever I do reuse elements, I try to disguise them as much as possible. This includes, cropping, changing colors, flopping, rotating and more to make the old element new and to integrate it into the new piece. I only do this when I am either, short of time, short on budget, or both, but it's one more trick that can be helpful if not abused. Don't get sucked into the habit of constantly using shortcuts though, or your art will suffer. There's still no substitute for good drawing and original thinking.

Butterfly Book - 2

Continuing on with the finished pieces of the butterfly book. Here, the butterfly begins to look for shelter as the rain falls I did an alternate version of this one without the branch and bird. A cropped version of it will be used as the cover.

Working digitally makes what used to be nightmare changes in the old days very simple. I just created the different elements on separate layers and turned off the bird layer for the cover. The rainstorm in the background was also created on a different layer which made it very easy to "paint behind" all the other elements without disturbing anything and without having to paint around all the details.

See Butterfly Book paintings 1 and 2 here

Butterfly Book-1

Here is the opening two spreads for the butterfly book I just finished. I will post them all in sequence over the next few days. As I showed earlier, these were all sketched out full value and then painted in the computer using Photoshop. I think the hand texture from the drawings combined with the hand done scanned texture adds a real organic and hand done feel to the digital painting. This was a fun project. Stay tuned for the rest of the paintings.

More Butterfly Drawings

Here are the final four drawings for the butterfly book I just finished up.  The first four drawings can be seen here. The digital painting process went well and I was able to render these in full color on the schedule I hoped for which was about a day apiece. Stay tuned for the finished pieces. I will begin posting the full color paintings in the coming week.

Butterfly Drawings

Here are the first drawings from a new book project I am beginning. Much like the Egg Book that I did last summer, this book is an easy reader and there are only eight interior illustrations total. The book gently describes a butterfly caught in a rainstorm and how it must wait out the downpour and dry it's wings in order to once again take flight. By spending a little more time on the drawing, I hope to speed the process and cut the actual Photoshop painting time down to about a day apiece. So far so good. I started the first piece late yesterday morning and will finish it up this morning, so I am right on target. I will post the color versions as I go along.

Egg Book finished pieces start here (scroll forward to see them all)
See my Photoshop painting process here