Thinking about a cover page for my children’s book

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21/365

My goal is to move at least an inch closer to my goal everyday. The goal, I remind myself, is to publish The Jaybird Who Fell Down a Chimney by March 31. Children’s picture books usually have 28 to 32 pages, and at this point I have zero pages.

One of today’s pictures is a doodle of a momma jaybird. I’m not sure if she’s Jimmy Jay’s mother, or one of his hottie aunts who lives two houses down on Jaybird Street. The second picture shows Jimmy goofing off in the chimney and giving a self-assured thumbs to show how cool he is. Jimmy looks about 20 in this picture, so I’m going to have to think hard about shaving 15 years off his appearance.

What a hottie!

Jimmy looks like a cocky high school sophomore. There is one obvious improvement over yesterday’s 35-year-old Jimmy — no 5 o’clock shadow.

Concept Hair for Jimmy Jay

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19/365

I’m working on stabilizing Jimmy’s hair, and for that matter, the hairstyle for all of the Jay family. Jimmy’s hair is leaning toward pointy, and the women seem to have a little more flair and rounder corners. In some of the images Jimmy is looking too old for the story. He’s supposed to be 7 or 8 and he looks 30.

As for color, there’s going to be some variety. After all, this is not going to be a realistic children’s book. By the way, no Photoshop funny business with the images.

Concept drawings, over and over

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17/365

I’m still struggling to create the look for Jimmy Jay. I’m frustrated that every time I draw him, he looks different. I’m hoping that if I draw him a 100 or 200 times that I’ll eventually work out how to draw him. Here are some of today’s renditions of Jimmy Jay, hero of The Jay Who Fell Down the Chimney.

The potbelly stove in ink and watercolor

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16/365

Again, the the gouache painting is too leaden. I’m going to move on from the Zorn palette to something a little brighter. I haven’t decided what colors I’ll be using.

Today I punched away wildly at my Daniel Smith Ultimate Mixing palette and the colors were okay until I painted the little flower pot on top of the stove. That Cerrulean Blue Chromium it a little too wild, but I approve of the rest of the picture. Pen and ink really floats my boat.

The squiggly lines show that there’s a complaining jaybird inside that stove.

Could use a shadow under the stove…that’s that voice of my inner critic talking to me. What a pest that guy is. All he ever does is bitch and moan.

Monarch Butterfly of sorts

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6/365

I looked at my reference photo a dozen times drawing this Monarch butterfly and got the white marking all wrong. I’m going to put “pay more attention to details” on my TODO list. Today I inked this with a Zig Cartoonist sable brush. I heard somewhere that the pros use this brush. Naturally, I wanted one, thinking it probably had some magic in it. However, in my hands this brush is like a slippery eel flopping across the page. More practice needed.

The Zig cartoonist sable brush is might difficult to handle. The sable hair is generously long, and very flexible, almost like a rigger. My heavy-hand sent the line skidding around the page. Still, the brush endows lines with lots of personality.

Jimmy Jay holding his butterfly buddy

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5/365

Jimmy Jay, the protagonist of The Jay That Fell Down the Chimney, is holding his pal, Buddy Butterfly. I used a Pentel Pocket Ink brush for the inking. I have two of them, one comes to a nice point, and the other is a almost blunt — that’s the one I used for this drawing. I learned that it’s unwise to use a blunt brush when lots of fine lines are needed.

An hour before I started drawing I was looking through Albrecht Durer’s woodcuts. I really like his clouds and skies. I can say that I need to practice drawing parallel lines and practice keeping even pressure on the ink brush.

Realistic and Comic Jays

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Day 3/365. A quick realistic sketch (as realistic as I could draw it) of a Steller’s Jay. These rascals are especially obnoxious and lovable in the Fall as they pass through Ashland on their way to the sunny South. Standing next to the real Jay is Jimmy Jay, my comic jay. Jimmy seems to be changing his appearance every day. I see that today he has some hatching to indicate form instead of being totally flat as he was yesterday. Eventually I want to create the perfect Jimmy Jay…so perfect that I won’t want to tinker with his looks for the next 20 years.

I use my Cheap Joe’s Legend Kolinski travel brush for this picture. They are awesome.


Creating my avatar

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Day 2/365 I decided to create an avatar for the social sites I belong to. Since I’m an illustrator, I thought it would be appropriate to draw and paint my avatar rather than just show a photo. I really enjoyed drawing this — playing with ink and paper is simply fun.

The process was to: 1) trace my photo avatar; 2) use the lightbox to transfer the outline to my sketchbook; 3) ink it using my Nikko G nib; 4) watercolor it; 5) the clean it up in photoshop.

This was originally color blue, but it looked too “Blue Man.” Thank you, Photoshop, for providing a nice way to change the color to something less cliché.

Day 1 of a 365 day learning project

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I’ve been mulling over doing a “project.” The project is simply to practice what I need to learn in order to do a children’s book. I have high hopes and grand aspirations, and slim skills. The project, which I’ve signed a contract to complete, is to practice what I need to know everyday for one hour even if I don’t feel like it, even if I’m tired, bored, sick, anxious, impatient, and so on.

So what about this “contract” I’ve signed? Of course, the contracting partner is the part of myself that’s lazy, tired, sick, anxious, and impatient. In other words, it’s a promise to myself. Sure, I've made promises to myself before and then given up when things got tough. And now, in this case, I want to learn how to do pen and ink and watercolor painting even though I know that watercolor painting is the hardest kind of painting in the universe. So be it—that’s the path I’ve chosen. I’ve signed a contract, and today I’m delivering the first installment.

Looks like gouache instead of watercolor. I’m working on it. The Speedball ink seems to dry slowly. There are a couple of spots where the watercolor made the soft ink run. Impatience strikes again.

Drawing, tracing, lightboxing, inking, and painting

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Tracing happily away, unaware that tempestuous watercolor gods are about to teach me a lesson in humility.

Today I decided to try my nib pens. I’ve had them for years and I’ve played with them now and then, made a big mess, and then decided they weren’t for me. But I really love pen and ink drawings, and lately I’ve been obsessed with Hergé and Hal Foster, both supreme masters of the inky line.

I created a pencil drawing, traced it with a liner pen, used the lightbox to then trace it onto some Strathmore Visual Journal bristol vellum paper, the painted it with watercolor. All went well except for the watercolor. I’m a brute with a watercolor brush. When I tried to lift some color using a paper towel, the paper started to disintegrate.

So, the lesson again, is be gentle, patient, and treat your paper kindly.

Keep the washes thin and let them dry completely before glazing another layer. And don’t rub the paper, at least not the Strathmore Visual Journal bristol vellum.