I’m not feeling great today. I haven’t eaten for the last 24 hours. The idea of eating is unthinkable. The cause…I’ve tracked it down to a bad bottle of very expired buffalo sauce.
Despite feeling like shit, I was able to finish page 15, which has been languishing in an incomplete state for over a year. In this picture we see that Jimmy and Betty have been rescued by a mysterious character, a dolphin.
At this point in the book, Jimmy and Dylan have been transfromed into Moai. They’re now solid rock and will remain that way for all eternity…unless someone can find a way to break the spell cast on them by the all-mighty volcano demon. I hope this story has a happy ending!
Here’s my rendition of Jimmy Jay about to enter the chimney. I can see from the look on his face that he’s a determined bird on a mission. When I combine all parts of the picture into the master image, his mother will be trying to grasp his leg to stop him, and behind her, Jenny Jay will be smiling enigmatically, while behind her will trail the mysterious Argyle Twins, the two suit-wearing mice who can fly without wings.
My next task is to work on a background layer worthy of all of this excitement.
Here’s that picture I was working on yesterday, the picture where I learned how to draw bicycle spokes. Ironically, I used to build my own road racing bicycles, which involves building bicycle wheels from scratch and putting spokes into all the right spots.
Buddy looks like he spends a lot of time on his bike.
30/365
Today I don’t have a finished painting, so I’ll post what I have up to this point. I’ve heard you’re not supposed to let them see you sweat, but that saying doesn’t apply when I’m trying keep a record of my learning how to create a children’s book. So, here it is: my sweaty art work, incomplete and in need of some loving attention.
I’ll post the finished version tomorrow for comparison.
28/365
Today the pressure of my self-imposed March 31 deadline hit me hard. With all of the questions of style, color palette, line width, pen and ink, or brush and ink, etc. running through my head, I felt the I was spinning my wheels when I should be working through my storyboard. I decided to skip all of the questions of technique and just draw and paint the best I can.
I chose to draw and paint Jimmy Jay making friends with Buddy Butterfly in a field of poppies. I think they both want to be the boss of the poppy Buddy is sitting on. By the way, Buddy is supposed to be a Monarch butterfly — I’ve definitely got his colors too reddish, but I’ll fix that in the final rendition. And I’ll make the poppies more poppyish. All in all, this is one more inch of progress.
In this picture I inkied only Jimmy and Buddy, and outlined a couple of poppies with a Prismacolor black colored penci. It’s produces a soft black that doesn’t overpower.
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.
11/365
I spent my painting time putting together the sketch and color layers I created yesterday. I thought it would take about an hour, but it took much longer. I spent more time on the digital compositing than on the actual drawing and painting. Photoshop is an awesome and seductive time sink. Still, I like what I can do with PS. I’m happy working in a hybrid way, using traditional media to create and digital to get it ready for publication.
The final image of two day’s labor… One of the problems with animal characters is what to do with their tails. Notice that Jimmy doesn’t have a tail, but Topaz does.
Hmmm. It looks like I’ve mislaid Topaz’ eyepatch.
