Picture Story: summer flight

Have I mentioned the calendar? Yeah, that thing. Well, because I'd rather be frantically cleaning the house the week before Christmas (not), I'm trying to stave off the possibility that I will also be trying to frantically finish the calendar graphics (which inevitably end up in sarahkdesigns or sunshinesight).

Anyway: 1 illustration complete as of this weekend! (just imagine that confetti and balloons fell from the ceiling)

I get out of the habit of drawing, I mean sort of. The sketchbook is ever present in my bag, as are the pencils and the pencil sharpener. But sometimes the sketches are for one of those projects that I'll get around to finishing someday... and then, of course, there are all the ideas for future projects and thumbnail sketches and half conceived ideas. 

So, since I'm one of those people who gifts art and makes my own greeting cards, certain holidays compel me to make things. I did these for Father's day (click here). Now, those 2 bluebirds were something I had actually drawn for some illustration that never quite materialized, but they ended up here in this picture. Anyway, I decided I could enlarge them and color in some details to make them 5X7 pictures — that I could give to my father for father's day... and when I was working on them — it occurred to me that it would be cool to use my bird drawings — enlarge them and reprint and recolor or over-render them and convert them into 5X7 bird prints... and then I got busy with cleaning and ninety degree weather (and probably watching tv and sleeping and going to work) — and well, someday I'll get around to that project, right?

But, working on these did rekindle my ongoing love of working with colored pencils. Don't get me wrong, I still love my digital photos and the magic of photoshop, but I can draw, very well, thank you.

So, one day while I was on break at work I sketched out a group of poppies and decided they needed snails — because I like snails... and then when I decided to use that sketch for the calendar — I decided it also needed some birds: bluebirds. Now, I had drawn these bluebirds way back in 2008:

 ...and I was never thrilled with how I illustrated them at the very last minute. So, "bluebirds & tulips" became one of those forgotten / not-so-good illustrations that exists on a file as a PSD, but otherwise is lost somewhere in the catalog of my work. It's a perfunctory illustration, but it isn't stellar... but I thought of it when I wanted to add birds to my poppies & snails picture.

 As usual, I scanned my sketch of the poppies, printed it as a blue page, inked the blue page, and scanned that into photoshop where after some editing it became this:

I printed the image (sans blue background) to color over with prismacolors.

 Now, while I was working on coloring that print-out, I was also working on fixing those bluebirds in flight that I illustrated back in 2008. In the mean time, it occurred to me that my Father's birthday was coming up — and I needed a gift. So, re-doing the bluebirds served 2 purposes: my new illustration & a gift. Because for the purposes of my calendar graphics — all I need is a scan of the picture I have made, someone else can have the original framed and hanging on a wall.

So, I copied the layer with the bluebirds from the original file, enlarged them, blurred over and edited out some details, and printed out an image that I could color over:

 And in the mean time I colored the poppies as well. I scanned both of those pictures into the computer, and after some editing — put them together in a file with some layers derived from my photos of the sky and portions of scans of my abstract acrylic paintings. So, it's finished:

"summer flight" by Sarah Knight

And now it's time to get to work on the next picture ; )