Seen a Giganotosaurus lately?

There’s going to be one on the cover of the book I just finished. Yes, I made the deadline (barely), working until 10 o'clock at night without a day off since about the middle of December. 

Haven’t worked that hard since illustrating my first book in 1984 which was pen and ink with pre-separated color. That meant that I had to color in with pencil 4 black and white “plates” for each spread of artwork, one for each process color of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. No wonder A Number of Dragons took 6 months to illustrate. 

Who knew then that a bunch of people out there would invent the computers, software, and electronic pens and tablets to allow artists to draw and paint digitally? One thing is for sure, the artwork shown above would not exist with those tools. When My Teacher is a Dinosaur is released next fall (hopefully), my buddy Giganotosaurus (Giggy for short) will be staring out from the cover. 

And now, on to reclaiming my normal life again... yay!

A “value-able” Photoshop tip

Checking the values of artwork as you work allows you to disregard color for a moment and evaluate the pattern of light and dark. Transforming the view of an image into black and white is very easy in Photoshop, using a Black and White adjustment layer. 


Many thanks to David Opie (www.spacemandave.com) for this simple but very useful tip.

Select the topmost layer in your document, then create a new layer thusly: go to Layer> New Adjustment Layer> Black and White and poof, the entire image is in grays (though none of the layers below are actually changed.) How does it look now... flat or contrasty, too much dark in one area, too uniform, or whatever? In the case of this Allosaurus on the left, he’s as flat as a pancake and needs some shading and highlighting.

That’s better, isn’t it? The way I’ve been doing the modeling lately is to make one layer for highlights set in Screen mode, then a layer for shading set in Multiply mode, both clipped to the color layer. The same color can usually be used on both layers but because of the different modes, it has a completely different effect. I‘m still not happy with his teeth because they don’t look sharp enough, but that’s a problem for another day! 

Here he is with the Black and White adjustment layer in place. From now on, I’m going to put a B + W layer on top of every image and use it to punch up my artwork. You can turn it off and on by clicking on the eyeball.

I’m still slogging away at these prehistoric illustrations... hope to finish before the next asteroid strikes!

Lost in time...

In case anybody is wondering what has happened to me, this is what I’m working on. Above is the eye of a Parasaurolophus, one of the hadrosaurs. The deadline for this prehistoric book is early February and it’s going to be a squeaker. The only way it has chance of being finished is if I don’t leave the house and chain myself to Photoshop.

It’s freezing here in Central Florida, the dinos wouldn’t last long down here. Hope your new year is off to a good start!

The 4 tops are finally quilts!

It took until late on Christmas Eve night, but I got them all finished in time. Here is a link to the previous posts that show the process of designing these. In case this is the first post you’ve read, the fabric for all four tops came in a box from an estate sale. These are the first “real” (as in functional) quilts that I’ve made. They’re lap size, about 4.5' X 6' or so. Without further ado, here is Anna with her new quilt and pillow with the fashionable ladies prancing around on the fabrics.These were a surprise for my nieces and nephew, which was fun. I almost had to give one of them held together with safety pins because time was running short. Below is Deborah with the mostly pink and white one.

That is Sarah with the groovy pink, green, and orange designs. I hear that it has instantly become her close companion for TV watching.

That reminds me, I just read a story in Consumer Reports that the “Snuggie” blankets shed handfuls of fuzz with every wash and end up threadbare. Another advantage of quilts.

Caleb’s quilt has guitars, too, plus musical notes on the backing fabric and keyboards on the binding. (He plays the cello.) This photo turned out a tad blurry, but you can see it better in the next

photo.

My husband Andy somehow took a nap amidst the cacophony of the group simultaneously playing the card game Flux and working a puzzle.

After making these simple designs with big chunks of fabric which still took quite a long time, I can’t imagine how people make the really complex blocks with a bunch of tiny pieces. More power to them, it’s back to small wall hangings for me!

Happy New Year, everyone!

My “fresh picked” calendar quilt came home

And it looks as yummy as ever. It has certainly traveled more than I have this year as one of the Quilting Arts 2010 contest winners. It has been at trade shows and appeared in quite a few ads in magazines and arrived back here in perfect condition. Thanks, Quilting Arts! The calendars are still available for the reduced price of $9.99 at the Interweave store. The July image is my Handpicked.

The theme for 2011 is “Flavor of the Month.” Yes, that means food, food, food! So, if you feel like quilting some comestibles, by all means enter. Here is the info, you just have to scroll down the page a little.

To see previous related posts, click here.

Recoloring a stegosaur

Here are three more versions of the Kentrosaurus from yesterday’s post. I got some very helpful feedback from my colleagues at PBAA (Picture Book Artists Association), so here goes. First I did a little tail surgery, then altered his body color only, below.

Below, his outline is a dark purple color. For some reason the background colors are brighter, too. Or are they just duller above... who’s in charge here, anyway?!?

Below the line work is a brown. It doesn’t look that different from the purple, really.

The brown/purple lines seem more integrated into the overall image, the black line stands out more... not sure which version I like, actually.

Prehistoric illustration style... opinions needed!

I’ve been working for eons on a children’s book about prehistoric life. Okay, for months and months. The dummy is finally more or less finished after some major revisions, so great... we’ll show it to a paleontologist to avoid any boneheaded errors, then on to the art. Speaking of errors, it’s difficult when the reference books don’t agree on basic terminology. Eohippus? Hyracotherium? Protorohippus? C‘mon guys, the little horses are important, let’s stick to one name already. This is as bad as the whole Pluto-isn’t-a-planet thing. (Just kidding, I’m aware that naming organisms can get complicated.)

Anyway, the first art sample is below, a Tiktaalik trying to decide whether it’s worth the struggle to flop around on land to go after some creepy-crawlies. Or maybe he’s just gazing wistfully and resolving to sign up for some legs.

(Hmmm... a mysterious line has appeared on the two images below... just ignore it, please. I would redo the images, but have managed to lose one version due to one of those “Save As“ snafus.)

I’ve been thinking that the above style is okay but not that dynamic. So below is a stegosaur (Kentrosaurus) rendered with a bolder black line. Better? Worse? Either is okay?

Of course, the fabulous thing about Photoshop is the ability to play with different color schemes, thus using up the time saved (if any) by using digital media. Either color version looks pretty good to me. I'm going to try having more black laced through the entire image to see how that looks. This is just a part of a page, maybe a third of it.

All of the line art and the plant shapes were done in Illustrator with the blob brush. This previous post goes into detail about the blob brush. Then the paths were pasted into Photoshop, filled, colored, and textured. BTW, the texture in the grass is from a photo of reindeer moss. Wonder if reindeer moss had evolved by the Jurassic Period? Or grass for that matter? I do know the reindeer hadn’t!