A Little Early Christmas

I just finished this one for the Friend magazine. The funny thing about working for certain publications is the lead time. I end up doing summer images in March and Christmas stuff in August. This one was no exception as it will go to print in a few weeks to begin distribution right around Thanksgiving. I know not all magazines work this far in advance, but the Friend typically works so far ahead, that I often forget I even did something until it shows up in my mailbox.

The intent of this piece is to help remind folks that there is a bit more to Christmas celebrations than decorations and presents and that we should take a little time to remember the real reason for the season. It was nice to take a few days to think about the upcoming holiday and think about what it truly means. Enjoy!

The Book Report

Just finished this little piece for the Friend Magazine for accompany a poem called The Book Report. It was a fun little piece to create. I focused most of my interest on the colors and shapes. I'm pretty pleased with the transitions between warm and cool. The light area on the banner is where the poem will print, so I had to leave it a little lighter than I normally would. This piece is digital over a graphite drawing.

Seagulls and Crickets - Finished

Seagulls and Crickets - 8.5" x 11", digital

Here's the finish on the seagull illustration. If you compare it to the previous progress post, you can see how much more work was done on the characters and the foreground. This was a fun one to work on and I'm pretty happy with the results.

Seagulls sketch phase

Seagulls first color block in

Seagulls- Almost Finished

Seagulls and Crickets- digital

At the risk of posting a finished picture later that does not look too different than this, I am going to show the progress of this piece. The last version I posted did not have any of the foreground laid in and none of the critters had been modeled yet.  I debated whether or not to let the line work show and decided not to, choosing the more fully rendered approach. I am hoping I will finish by the end of the day but we shall see, I still have a lot of cricket and grass detail yet to render. Tomorrow's post will hinge on what the Today's Inspiration theme shakes out to be as that seems to have become my Friday ritual. Regardless, I'll put up the finished version of this when it's done.

Seagulls - Progress

Last night I began blocking in the background for the drawing I showed yesterday. It's coming along well and I am pleased with the progress so far. First step was to isolate my  scanned drawing in a channel layer and then load it as a selection. I then  colored the drawing a little so that it wasn't all black.  I changed the drawing to a multiply layer, added another layer behind it for background color and started painting. As I progressed with the background I found myself erasing out the drawing from the top layer. Initially thought I would leave a lot of the drawing showing, but I am beginning to change my mind and may just paint over all the line work before I am done. We'll see how it goes.

Seagulls and Crickets

I'm just starting a fun little piece for a poem that will run in the Friend magazine. Folks from here in Utah will probably be familiar with the story of how seagulls save the crops of early Mormon pioneers from a massive cricket infestation shortly after their arrival in the Great Salt Lake valley. The account has it that the pioneers battled the crickets in vain until hoards of seagulls arrived from the nearby Great Salt Lake to devour the crickets. Not only did they eat their fill, but they then flew back to the lake to disgorge them, returning to eat more.Certainly this was a miraculous deliverance that preserved the crops of the desperate settlers. Here's the final design sketch. I'll be using Photoshop to render the final artwork.

Forget The Sweater

On the Monkey Bars- 11" x 17" digital

Weather here has been downright balmy this week with temps in the high 40's (Fahrenheit). A welcome change from the single digits of a week ago. I actually wandered around outside today in just a t-shirt. I just finished this illustration for The Friend magazine done in Photoshop. It is a wraparound cover with a twist. The issue is a special double sided edition. the front half of the magazine will be the regular set of stories and articles but flip it over (like a double sided comic book) and the back half will be full of puzzles and games. It was fun to make the back half echo the front but with slightly different characters. The white bar along the far side is to allow for the bar code and address (non-negotiable unfortunately). I asked Brad Teare the designer to email me back a mock up of my picture with all the masthead and bubbles pasted in. I then inserted it into the illustration to get the "endless magazine" effect, which was sort of fun to do.