Picture Story update: lightshine

Procrastination — who doesn't? Maybe people with personal planners who worry about schedules or something? Well, I'm not one of those people I guess. So, in theory, I took the week off from working on the calendar. I mean, last week I finished the second illustration (only 10 more to go). But there was something about the next picture on the docket that I'm just not ready to commit to or in the mood to work on, so I'm going to shove that to some far off back corner of my mind until I generate a solution — not unlike one of those 'moments' on House - where Wilson would be blathering on about something and House would have that epiphany about exactly what malady or combination of maladies the patient had.

So, on a whim, I decided that instead of plowing through another illustration I was going to rework something that had always bothered me about one of my older illustrations...

"lightshine"

 the original version...

and the new and improved version:

It wasn't really until 2002 that I started illustrating in a fashion that involved a lot of photoshop. Before then everything was colored pencils and bristol. Sketches were transferred from my sketchbook to the bristol via tracing paper, and well, that was it... and then time marched on and now I end up interfacing a lot of things on the computer. Technically, I guess it saves me the trouble of drawing the picture 4 times before I color it (sketch it, trace it, color the back of the trace, draw the trace onto paper)...

So, it was in June of 2009 that I made "lightshine." And it was my first endeavor with computer generated sunshine. The original looks okay and all, and I vaguely remember how I formatted the whole thing, but I was never exactly thrilled with how it looked.  It was very flat and thin and like two-dimensional. Plus I played with feathering, blur, and layer styles — probably for the first time.

It was later in November of 2009 when I was working on penguin pals that I took a more calculated effort in making rays of sunshine:

 This is how it began (above) — and after some toggling with tools and copying, pasting, and rotating — this is how it looked:

These were my initial efforts, and they ended up here:

 penguin pals

 You see those 4 lines there — that emanate from the sun? They annoy me. Something wasn't quite aligned right or sized right...
I would subsequently remake the file for the sunshine into this:

Very "Wizard of Op" — I know ; ) That is, btw, like the coolest book I read as a child.

Anyway, that was the fix that I used when I was working on what I think of as the sunshine illustrations, which include this:

yellow warblers sunshine song

Subsequently, when I decided to fix the sunshine on lightshine some 3 years later — that's the file I referenced. So, now I'm happy with the way the picture looks. You can check out the new and improved "lightshine" here.

Yeah, so now I guess it's time to get back to illustration 3 for the calendar...
Have a lovely weekend!

Picture Story: 2 bunnies on a hill -- sarahkdesigns

"2 bunnies on a hill" available at sarahkdesigns

I draw, so I tend to think that the picture stands on its own. I'm just adroit like that. I suppose if I was in the business of using words to illustrate, then I would be a writer...

"2 bunnies on a hill" was made for one of my calendars. Every year I spend three weeks before Christmas putting together the calendar that I had vowed would already be done. (This happens every year: I get everything done at the last minute and vow that won’t happen next year… it always does, no matter how early I start).

Anyway, I make the calendar for my family: parents, grandparents, sister, aunts, uncle, etc. So, while I may be a slacker twenty-something who wears black t-shirts and maryjanes and listens to Pink Floyd… well, that’s not my Grandma. So, the calendar has to be family friendly, because I expect my relatives to hang this up somewhere and show it off.

I also like the calendar to be seasonally appropriate. We all live in the Midwest, so we have all 4 seasons. “2 bunnies on a hill” was originally created for the April slot of my 2006 calendar. And it did not look the way it does now when I had originally finished it.



This was one of my early digital collages. Digital collage was a technique that I fell into way back when I was working on a comic book. Since the comic I was working on was supposed to be black and white and I knew it would be printed digitally, I wanted to do something anathema to comics: incorporate texture! So, I spent a lot of time back then scanning pen & ink drawings and filling them with scans of photos or magazine clippings or scans of objects… Anyway, the 2006 calendar was my first to feature digital collages instead of just reproductions of my drawings or paintings. Ah, modern technology.

So, the “drawn” portion of the image literally actually is just the 2 bunnies and the silhouette of the hill. Everything else is present due to the magic of photoshop. The grass was created in a series of layers using the “grass” brush in photoshop. I just kept changing the size of the brush. I started small at the top of the hill and got progressively larger by the bottom of the page. Then I think I ran the layer through a filter.

The sky was created from a scan of one of my older salt on watercolor paintings. It was back in 2000 or 2001 when I started doing abstract salt on watercolor paintings. I did a series of them for an aqueous media class, this was one of them. Anyway, I scanned the painting and flipped it over on itself with layer styles. So, if you look closely you might notice that one side kind of mirrors the other. I think I also put a color layer over the altered scan of the painting.

The stars were created using the shape tool. They are also “filled” with portions of a scan of salt on watercolor, although it reads more faintly. I wanted the coloration of the stars to be like those glow in the dark stars that they sell in toy stores. I always thought those were nifty. I had a few of them as a teenager.

The fill of the bunnies was recycled from a comic book project. And that fill has been used in many of my digital collages. The original file for the fill was created from a scan of a picture in a magazine. It was actually a rug on the floor in the picture. Anyway, I scanned it, and copied and pasted and rotated parts of it, and used the clone stamp tool until I had what amounted to a much larger sampling of “rug” (or curlyfur.jpeg as it is known in my files). It’s original purpose as a fill was supposed to be (ironically) for a demonic rabbit.

Anyhow, when I was deciding what I wanted in my etsy shop I decided to go back and revisit what was originally known simply as “April.psd”. I think I wanted something purple. As it turns out, violet is my favorite color. So, I decided to liven up the sky with a wash of purple and periwinkle that mirrored the shape of the hill. And for consistency and color relationships, I decided to change up the color of the grass; making it a more olive shade of green and lighter at the top of the hill.

I’ve certainly been surprised at how many prints of this image that I have sold : )