Today I had 30 minutes to work on my book. I carefully selected an inch of work, something I could complete in my limited time. I decided to paint a shirt on my volcano cat and painted her in her Swansea City kit. It was a matter of creating a new layer, picking colors from the reference image, and painting. I gave her the number “7” and put her name on her shirt, and she dreams of scoring goals for Swansea City.
My final sketch for this low angle perspective view
I wrestled with this low angle, upward-looking perspective all day. At first I tried to draw this view from imagination, and it sucked. Fortunately I found a reference image of a hiker looking up at a sheer cliff just like the one my kids have to climb. I used to think that I had perspective down pat, but I don’t., not yet, anyway. .
My next challenge for this picture will be to paint the rock face. I need to add toeholds, handholds, nook, and crannies, and a few flowers and plants. When I’m in learning mode even tasks that sound like they should be simple draining. When I begin to feel that I’m slowly becoming encased in concrete, I take a nap. When I return to the drawing board, I’m able to pick up the pieces and move on another inch.
Today I got lucky — two images were big enough and square enough to work with the 8-inch by 8-inch format I’m using for the print version of my children’s picture book. The images also work with the 16:10 e-book format. I do have to adjust the text boxes for both formats. The work goes quickly when the images don’t have to be repainted.
As I’m looking at these pictures and writing the text, I’m wondering: what kind of mother/father would read this book to their children? As a kid, I would have been fine with this story. I liked to read about daring rascals who get into trouble, and then get out of it by wit or by luck. I still enjoy picaresque tales like Post Office by Charles Bukowski.
Finally, a day that has granted me the gift of making two inches of progress!
Today was a back-to-the-day-job day. I got off work late, but I had time to start repairing an image that has the wrong proportions for my square print book. I didn’t account for the bleed. As a result, legs are cut off, the sun will be cut in half; the chimney gets whacked, and more.
I created this image in Procreate and I’m having a hell of a time fixing it. My impatience is affecting my attitude. I was hoping that I’d have time today to do another gouache painting, but that didn’t work out. However, it’s important to me that I do something on my children’s picture book project every day, no matter what other unforeseeable detours I run into. The way I see it, an inch a day is an admirable accomplishment.
The canvas size of this image needs to be expanded to the bleed lines.
