November? You were barely here...

November is one of those months that just zips in and out, or so it seems... So, did you vote? Of course you did. I did too. I always do. 

The polling place is about a mile from my house, and I have a history of showing up at the wrong times (when I don't have to stand in line for 20 minutes is when I consider it to be the right time)... so, instead of showing up:

 when it opens - people on their way to work are there then...

 9am-11am - people who run errands and shop are there then...

 noon - lunchtime - everyone is there then...

 after 3pm - school is out, workplaces begin to close...

So, sometime shortly after 1pm seemed like a safe option. Ha! I stood in line with 100+ other people for 45 minutes.

For the record: I'm a democrat, I've always been a democrat. So, you know, in the 3 whole minutes that it took me to actually vote — I filled in the circle next to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Would have taken less time if the lead in the #2 pencil hadn't been broken. Yes, we have scantron style ballots. No levers, no punches. Just a bunch of adults filling in circles on a piece of paper.

Anyway, that's done.

Are you still reading this? Good. Because that last paragraph wasn't the end of the world, and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned my political leanings before... 

Anyway, November, I hardly know ye as a month, because you fly by every year while I'm trying to wrap up a bunch of illustrations. Yes, I have 6 illustrations to finish for the calendar — and I only managed to totally change my mind on a couple of them at the last minute and totally start over from scratch, ha!

So, in all honesty, there's nothing that looks super exciting about the sketch phase. Plus, my current sketchbook sat in the trunk of my car and I pulled it out because I ran out of sketchbooks, and well, the paper is kinda lumpy. It's usable, but warped... the usable part is the important part. So, yes, sketching and scanning and inking scan print-outs is what I have been doing fiendishly for the last 2-3 weeks, when not sleeping or cleaning.

I finished these back in June - for father's day.

male eastern bluebird

female eastern bluebird

It was interesting to take renderings that I had done at a certain scale and blow them up to fill in the details. Technically, it's something I do all the time, up until I started these - I hadn't drawn any birds that were quite that big.

I have some other bird portraits on the docket, but that's all on hold until I finish the calendar. So, I guess I should get to work finishing those pictures, and then maybe Christmas will be here and done and over with, and I can finally just relax, right? Until it snows and I have to drive to work in it...

Anyway, Thanksgiving is tomorrow — so HAVE A HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Picture Story: the rainy fox

Hey, have I mentioned the calendar? Yeah, I know. It's kind of my fixation for the until 25 December. So, one illustration was completed last week and now I've finished another.

The rainy fox started out as a sketch that I drew while waiting to get an oil change for my car... I scanned the sketch, printed it as a blue page, inked the blue page, and scanned that back in and made it into a file.

There's a decision that I made about this illustration: no outlines. In my pre-digital illustrating days — objects in pictures never had outlines and everything was rendered by hand with colored pencil... somehow when pen & ink enters into the picture - there end up being outlines, and I decided that this picture would be outline free — so I "blocked" my picture so that it had no outlines. Blocking is a fairly arbitrary process - you just fill the parts of the picture with color. And I guess color schemes are just kind of inherent, at least they are to me. Even if I'm not precisely sure what I think a picture should look like when done - I have a vague idea of the colors, tone, mood, and presentation... 

You know, the sky isn't aqua blue with white clouds, and the ground isn't peacock green.

Since it's the picture for November — the original sketch has some raindrops penciled in, and "the rainy fox" is scrawled across the bottom of the page. So, when it came time to fill in my blocked file — I picked photos of leaves on the ground and a scan of a watercolor that fit that mood and then superimposed them over my layer of color blocking.

The tree is always the truly labor intensive part of the picture. I select some of my digital photos of tree bark and manipulate them in photoshop to turn a couple photos into a full tree.

So, once I have the colors the way I want them, and the layer overlays of photos or paintings for texture or effect — then it's time to print that image in order to draw over it with prismacolors.

I started by coloring in the details on the fox.

And then I gave the tree the illusion of dimensionality...

 And then it was time to color in the clouds and add the rain...

So, in the end, what started as a sketch becomes a full color illustration:

the rainy fox — Sarah Knight

Outside: pumpkins, Halloween never ends

Halloween is always kind of a big deal. It just is. I'm not sure why, because I'm not really some sort of Halloween traditionalist, and really, I'm not fully into the Halloween mood until the day of. Strangely, if they showed Halloween movies for 30 days following Halloween, then I'd probably actually have the chance to watch them...

So, here are some of the pumpkins I photographed in October and that first day of November...

 

I think it's interesting that in the last 5 years heirloom pumpkins have become fashionable, and that people carve them for Halloween.

Anyway, I hope you had a fun one, and now I have to get back to finishing those illustrations for the calendar. I've just about hit the halfway point!