Just keep drawing, drawing, drawing...

The last couple months have been a flurry of activity for me artistically.  I continued to groom an online presence, my daughter and I participated in the first of two local summer chalk art festivals, I prepared for an Iowa SCBWI Illustrator exhibition, finished the Go Fish piece I had been working on, began chewing my way through a personal project that had been bumbling around in my brain (an ABC collection of various animals reading), and producing, addressing, and mailing my first set of promotional postcards.

It is a lot of work but I love every minute of it.  Every day I look forward to the next step in this journey.

Well, I'm glad that's done.

I don't know about you but I invariably push myself and get overly ambitious with my artwork.  Generally there is one part of the piece that I begin thinking from the minute I put pencil to paper.  For this piece it was the Mother Nature character.  This character worried me because I didn't know at first how I would render her, and once I did I had no clue how to paint her.  For me, adult female characters are far more challenging than male characters, children, or animals.  I think it mainly extends from the fact that I do not have a very deep bench when it comes to visual shorthands for female characters.  This is a deficiency I am conscious of and have been trying improve on.

Go Fish! (It's not nice to fool Mother Nature) - Mother Nature detail

This one was challenging because I wanted to give her a plant vibe with green skin but I also knew that the palette had the potential to become monotonous.  In addition there was just a lot of detail to handle with some areas like the face and hair that I was worried about how exactly to paint them.  I am pretty happy with how it all came out.  I realize the purple epaulets with the green skin gets reminiscent of the old school Incredible Hulk but purple and green are a great combo.

This is always the hard part...

...and the best part.  The part where your original concept has taken a final form and it is ready to transfer and paint.  This is the point I look forward to from the moment I conceive of a piece and also the point I dread the most (truth be told I also dread finishing because I invest in and enjoy the journey of each piece) because I have to decide how to transform it from drawing to painting.  

Go Fish! (It's not nice to fool Mother Nature) - draft April 8, 2018

So many choices, where to start, what palette, what kind of paint, ink or no.  This is also the last point to make any changes or additions.  Here is also the point where I self talk to make sure I keep "mistakes" in perspective...to discard the precious.

Precioussssss