Dreading Page 28 -- The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

/

Every time I see page 28 I cringe and move on to another page, any page. Now that I’m almost finished repainting the many damaged pages I created a year ago, page 28 has floated like a corpse to the top of the stack. My job is to make this character, Betty Burro, cute. She also has to look like all of the other Betty Burro paintings in the book. Yikes!

We’re having weather straight from Hell. It’s 104 outside and close to 90 in the studio. The humans are sweating and the canines are panting. Our downstairs space, however, is a comfortable 72. So that I can work without sweating — and the dogs can be comfortable — I've decided to work down there. To do that, I need to move my work station downstairs…or, I need to install Clip Studio Paint on my iPad. I’ve tried it before and didn’t really take to it. I’m hoping that it works out better this time. Maybe I can overcome the bitter taste of my previous encounter. Maybe...

Page 56 Redone and My Lens Arrived from Ukraine

/
children's picture book, Clip Studio Paint EX

That’s supposed to be a wet kitten.

I bought a lens for my Leica on EBay. The seller is in Ukraine. I’m amazed that the lens could be delivered even though Ukraine is being horrifically attacked.


Page 60 Redrawn -- Jimmy Jay and Dylan Dolphin waking up

/

For page 60 I used a simple G-pen to replace the fuzzy pencil ink. I like the pencil-look, but I believe that I’m more likely to maintain a consistent style by sticking with simple ink lines.

My strategy is now to replace my “painterly” pages with simple line drawings. As for coloring, I’m using the bucket tool to lay down the base color, then using multiply and lighten layers to apply the shadows and highlights.

Redrawing Page One

/

Replacing the pencil outlines with G-pen ink

When I started the book, I imagined Jimmy Jay and Betty Burro running from the Monarch Butterfly sanctuary to Guadalajara. I got frustrated with the background and decided to just sketch the two of them running and move on. I would come back to finish the page later. It is now later.

My plan is to re-ink both characters, re-color them, and then add a jungle background.

Redrawing Page 31

/

I’ve been distracted lately. When that happens, the best I can do is to go through the book and start repairing pictures that need work. When I review the pages, I see that they look unfinished, as if I was in a hurry — or lazy — when I decided that the page was good enough.

Page 31 needs re-inking and coloring — a complete makeover.

Redrawing page 60

/

Jimmy Jay is unrecognizable on page 60. That’s him on the left. He’s cute in an ugly way, but it takes a stretch of the imagination to accept him as the real Jimmy Jay. I don’t want the reader to start wondering who this new character is. The corrected Jimmy is on the right.

When I drew this page, I was going through “rough inking madness” and now I have to redo the linework, at least for Jimmy and Dylan. The background can remain rough. I have several more pages that use heavy outlines.

The new refrigerator

/

The new refrigerator arrived today. We ordered it 3 months ago and it finally made its way through the supply chain to our house. The thing about refrigerators is that they’re not exciting. They’re utilities. When they don’t work right, they’re horrible. When they work right, you don’t even know they exist.

Getting a new refrigerator sounds like a simple task. It’s not. Before it arrives, you have to clear the furniture to make a pathway for the delivery guys to carry in the huge machine. You have to empty the old refrigerator and stash the frozen food into ice chests. You have to move the the unfrozen food to your tabletops and counter tops or put it in the empty dishwasher.

When the burly hipster guys carry out the old ice box, you see that it was covering 10 years of dirt, dust, and grease. The wall and floor are filthy. You scramble to wipe away what you can with paper towels. What you can’t wipe away, you’ll just cover it with the new box. If you ever sell the house, you can give it a real cleaning then. You’re thinking these thoughts when you see they’re coming right back with the new box.

After they leave, you have to reassemble everything you’ve disassembled. After you do that, you start putting all of the food back into the box. That’s when you realize the the new box is smaller than the old box. Easy solution — you throw away food you know that you never intended to eat. That does the trick.

Then you go take a one-hour nap.

Making a Mess

/

I’ve started fixing some of my early pages. In the one above the heavy lines are bothering me. I drew this page so long ago that I’ve forgotten which brush I used to get the lovely texture. I’ve changed my style three or four times i n the last year. My fickleness coming back to bite me. Ouch!