More final line work details from a few different spreads:

pencil on rives bfk

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pencil on rives bfk

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pencil on rives bfk

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details of final line work:

pencil on Rives BFK

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pencil on Rives BFK

Light table time! Transferring the last set of drawings onto strathmore paper.

Shoulder Ride redraw

This is a portion of one of the tight ink roughs I use to transfer onto final paper. The lines need to be really sterile so I can see them clearly through the paper. I find them really disappointing in comparison to the original sketch, because the energy gets sucked right out of them in this format – and sometimes that can be incredibly disheartening and I get scared that I might not be able to breathe life back into them in the final artwork stage. But beyond just the (required) lack of personality in the linework, this one needed some structural rework – it’s embarrassingly poorly drawn (so embarrassing that I almost didn’t want to post it). The pose is awkward, the proportions are off, there are bad, bad things going on with that arm and wrist, the viewing angle is wrong and it’s lacking the energy I really wanted.

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For corrections of  individual elements at the rough stage, I usually just redraw them on a scrap of tracing paper and paste them in rather than redrawing the entire scene. It always feels like cutting corners to me, but the reality is, where time can be saved, it really should. (Recently, I bought Hokusai One Hundred Poets, and was thrilled to see that many of his sketches for his prints contain areas where he carefully cut out and replaced elements.)

But the issue was beyond just that arm. So I set out to try to fix it by redrawing the dad and child.

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I haven’t been posting for a while as I’ve been trapped in a drawing loop. I’ve been redrawing the same figure over and over for what feels like weeks, but really is only days. It’s a figure in one of the most spare compositions, which means that things have to be right or the whole spread just won’t work. I think I see light at the end of the tunnel. Either that, or it’s just a bit of daylight shining through the mountain of tracing paper I’ve become buried under.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. But I’m still working – it’s just been a very head-down time in an attempt to get work done. I’m loving the drawing process now and how the slight change of an angle of a leg or head completely alters the dynamism of the subject.

My desk is lost under layers and layers of tracing paper and there are bits and pieces of it taped up all over the wall.

At this stage, the rider above looks a bit creepy for a children’s picture book (although not for the ones I liked as a kid). But he won’t be skeletal when he’s done – I just find paring the figures down to bones helps when working on posing. He’ll be draped in all sorts of shaggy and voluminous clothing when he’s finished.

Things have been a quiet on the blog for the past month – I’ve taken some time off from the book to do some money making work to keep the studio lights on/pay the rent etc. Illustrator cannot live off advances alone. Well, at least this one can’t.

It’s two days from Christmas, I’ve closed down the studio for the holidays and am attempting to recover from too many late nights and weekends lost to work. So far, recovery is slow. One word – exhausted.

Part II of the book stage will involve getting reacquainted with inking after many, many months of pencil and charcoal on vellum – not that inking was ever second nature to me. The worst part is steeling myself in anticipation of the feeling of failure brought on by my inevitable inept and uninspired line work, and gathering the strength to push past that to something closer to what I’ve had in mind for these drawings for so long. I’m itching to get back to them – the roughs are all taped to the studio wall and I mentally draw them every time I glance at that wall. I’m not sure there’s anything I find more terrifying than holding a brush full of black ink over a blank, white piece of paper and there’s never enough time to just play and experiment.

Here’s a little ink colour test – the weird snowbally things are, in fact, stars. Or at least stand-ins for stars. Everything’s just sort of slapped in there to give me an general idea of how things might look.

Colour and texture inspiration:

Pushing Off from Shore | (colour test detail) pencil & willow charcoal on vellum with acrylic, watercolour, digital

I’ve almost finished my 7th drawing – but stopped for a little bit to do a quick colour test mockup so I can get my colour process sorted. This won’t be exactly what the final illustration will look like (less gloomy, hopefully), but it’ll be the same sort of treatment.

I spent the last 4 days working on a side project collaboration with friends and that little diversion helped me figure out how to approach the colour for the book. Sometimes taking a little break is a good thing – but it’s hard getting back into the swing of drawing again. I’m on my third cup of coffee this morning – it’s a procrastination/stalling technique I employ when I’ve lost my drawing groove and am afraid to start again (I can’t draw with my hand wrapped around a mug).