Drawing Mary Finished!

This turned out to be a great study in the art of the value study! The darkness of the glass, which basically works like the background, really changed how I needed to handle the values of the images within the piece. I ended up putting the glass into a layer in Photoshop so I could easily adjust the value and decide what was working best. When I add the color, I plan on going very warm with her hand and face. I might also darken their value slightly. But for now, this will work great for the under painting.

Drawing Mary Part 4

...and now you know who Mary is! I have one more step to post on this black and white under painting. I'm still working on the value of the background and creating the glass itself. I feel I need to push the reflective quality to distinguish between inside and outside.

Robert's Snow: for Cancer's Cure

The snowflakes for Robert's Snow project are now up!

You can see all of the snowflakes here. And don't forget about Behind the Snowflakes. I'm continuing to update my list of artists who posted blogs about their snowflake. Some even show how they created them!

Soon, more information will be coming your way on Blogging for a Cure, your chance to learn more about each one of these talented artists!

Thanks Julie from Children's Illustration for the heads up!

Blogging for a Cure

I interrupt this work-in-progress for the following announcement:

Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast had a great idea to help promote and drive traffic to the fund raising effort of Robert’s Snow: for Caner's Cure during their online auction of special snowflakes, created by children’s book illustrators. They are using their organizational expertise and kidlitosphere popularity to put together Blogging for a Cure, a collection of blogs that will be participating in an upcoming multi-blog effort to highlight the illustrators, and display each unique snowflake they have created for the ’07 auctions!

I am proud to say I will be involved in showcasing two of these illustrators! Special thanks to Jules and Eisha for all their hard work in putting this together.

Stay tuned for more information.

On a related note, be sure to check out the update of my post Behind the Snowflakes. More illustrators have been added and I will continue to add bloggers who post previews of their snowflakes as I find them.

Drawing Mary Part 3

Here's the start of the layout for the entire piece.

Drawing Mary Part 2

A little more of the work-in-progress of Mary. I'm doing this in graphite. I plan on using this as an under painting to do the final in colored pencil. At this point I will leave some areas light in value so I can layer light colors on top.

Drawing Mary

A while ago I was having trouble deciding what to draw next. I had a lot of options, some I knew I should be working on now. Another one I didn't need to be working on, but the whole concept was so cool that I couldn't stop thinking about it. I had started gathering reference material and had decided that was what I'd draw next. Well, somehow things just change. Opportunities come up. So instead I'm working on a totally different piece. One I had no idea I'd even be doing.

It's funny how when you get to the stage where you're deciding just what the character will look like, you find yourself thinking a lot about this person. And the excitement builds. I'm so glad to be drawing again! I'll post this as a work-in-progress, at least the black and white stage. I'm open to any comments along the way.

Post Cards, Editors, and Art. Oh, My!

When I was putting together my list of art directors to send sample post cards to I included a few editors. Not because I had some inside information or connections, I did it because there were a few editors I had met at events that I would love to work with. I figured why not. What's the worst that can happen? My post card could end up in the trash. Oh, well. That's better than not trying. I know the art director is the one to choose the illustrator, but who's to not say an editor may love your work and hold on to that card and eventually suggest to the art director that your work is worth considering for a particular project. Well it looks like the "top secret" editor on a popular blog is the one to say just that!

"Editors do help to suggest illustrators. If I like a postcard enough, I'll put it up on my wall to remind myself of the illustrator." EA

You can read more here: Editorial Anonymous