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.

Fairy tales

Our blog topic this week is fairy tales. I have illustrated scenes from Little Red Riding Hood several times, and this is my favorite piece.

Paula's Sketch

As Jenn said, how I do my sketches for drawings depends on the project. In the case of the above illustrations, I had a slew of spot drawings in line and wash to do in a short amount of time. So these have to be done quickly, with not too much time spent on the sektches. But because I do a lot of magazine spreads, posters, etc., (on which I spend a lot of time working on the roughs/sketches), I'll get bogged down in working out too much detail in these smaller, should-be-simpler, sketches. The above looks like just that. The sketch is fairly tight and detailed.

I don't know how others do sketches like this. If it's too loose, the AD might not be able to get a good idea of how the end illustration will look. But if it's too detailed, one can end up spending way too much time on something if there ends up being a lot of changes, and no room for flexibility if you decide to change some things. Tough line to walk.

Sketch

I always like seeing people's pencil sketches. Although, what I wind up submitting to clients depends a bit on the subject matter. Usually I submit plain line drawings. But sometimes I feel like it's necessary to include a little more to get the point across. For instance, in this illo for "On a Dark, Dark Night" I thought it was important to show that this would be on a dark, shadowy background so I scanned in the pencil drawing and added some shadows in Photoshop. Here's the final art...

Sketch

I think it's interesting to see how the sketches other illustrators delivers to their clients looks like. This is a sketch for an illustration I made for Highlights High Five Magazine last year, and this is how most of my sketches look. Most of my sketches are really rough, but when it's for a client I clean up my lines. Sometimes I make a bit of shadows like in this sketch, and sometimes just lines.