Jannie's Color Palette

This is one of my favorite color palettes recently. I've been using these colors alot for my 21 Day Creative Challenge:

Paula On Color Palettes

This week we're talking about what color palettes we use and do we have a favorite, etc. I can't say that I have a "favorite" palette but I do use some colors consistently in my illustrations. I like to use pinks/oranges, blues/purples as a highlight, particularly the pink and blue shown in the drawing of a dragon, below. I sometimes do a lot of blending and building up of color on my drawings using a digital chalk brush in Painter X. I'll layer very light colors and top off middle-grounds with a pink. Shadows I top off with blue. I feel it gives it a warmth that I won't get if I just use a darker color of whatever the base color is I'm highlighting/shading.

I also like to experiment with using a mono-chromatic scheme (below). It pushes me to think outside of my comfort zone and try something new. Here, I've used the same dragon image from above, but used a mono-chromatic scheme in a yellow-green.

Color Palette

I thought it would be fun to see everybody's favorite color palette, so that's the topic this week. When I look at my illustrations, I love the pieces that has green and blues as the main colors, like this one. I use a lot of bright, warm colors - and I love all kinds of green with yellow in it.

Facical Expressions

I just finished reading a book about the master of facial expressions, Normal Rockwell. I have this painting of his hanging in my studio for inspiration. When I was a kid the phone company used this same piece on the cover of the telephone book (although, I'm pretty sure it was originally published as a Post cover). I remember spending a lot of time studying all the faces. I didn't know who Norman Rockwell was but I was drawn to all the animated faces, I can almost hear that guy at the bottom guffawing. Hmmm, I wonder if my parents were ever concerned that their kid spent hours staring at the phone book?

Paula On Facial Expressions--Surprise!

Like Holli said, getting the right facial expression from a character can be a real challenge sometimes. The above is an example of a recent piece I did involving a girl looking surprised at something. She wasn't supposed to be happy-surprised, or scared-surprised, but more of a shocked-surprised. Images 1-3 are early versions of her in the initial rough. I was really concentrating more on the setting at this point (which you can't see) than her but I did try out some different mouths and the direction she was looking. In 4-6 she has changed a bit because the rough changed a lot, but to me, she doesn't look surprised enough. And you can also see that the placement of the object she was looking at shifted around from rough to rough. Then in images 7-9, I've almost settled on her look. She's leaning back more, shoulder's hunched, and her hand now starts to clutch her throat as she gasps. Her large eyes, small pupils, the high-arched eyebrows and her small mouth with a slight jaw-drop say it all. Surprise!

Facial Expressions

I struggle with facial expression sometimes and find it hard to get many out of the characters I draw. I think it's because their faces are so simple. To help me out I have this book which I should really pull out more and reference.

Paula's Take on "Sunhine"

I did a number of black and white spot illustrations a few months ago for a book entitle "YUM: Your Ultimate Manual for Good Nutrition" for Lobster Press. Some of the illustrations are of personified vitamins and minerals as superheroes. The boy above is Vitamin D. What is one of the best sources for vitamin D? Sunshine, of course!

Sunshine

We have the most beautiful weather here in Norway these days, so that inspired me to make this weeks blog topic "sunshine". This is a little painting I made for a friend's birthday last year. I get in spring mood when I look at it.

no fairy tales to show...

I have racked my brain and I don't think I've ever done a fairy tale illustration. I've done plenty of nursery rhymes it seems but no fairy tales. So above it a promotional illustration I did for the nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence.

Fairytale - princesses

I did this sketch a long time ago and haven't done the colour art yet. I was having a moment in a coffee shop when I was feeling uninspired and decided to just sketch something just for the pure joy of it. When I was little I spent many hours drawing princesses and I guess I've never gotten tired of it! This illustration is for the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, one of the stories I've always loved and found fascinating.