The kids in my illustrations usually looks about 5-7 years old. I made an effort in this illustration to make the kids look a bit older. Closer to 10 years old. I think it's difficult to draw older kids. Maybe I just need to practice it more...
This is one of my favorite color palettes recently. I've been using these colors alot for my 21 Day Creative Challenge:
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.
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.
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?
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!
which I should really pull out more and reference.
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!
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.
