Bossy Betty Burro is saying, “What a mess!”
Tuca Moai has a messy room with a leaky ceiling. A leaky ceiling is understandable since his house hasn’t had a new roof in over 400 years. He’s just a kid and doing the best that he can until his parents wake up from their centuries long sleep. That is, if they ever wake up.
Blue line layer under pencil sketch.
Today I learned the value of flipping an image horizontally to check for wonky features. My original sketch looked okay, but when I flipped the image horizontally, it just looked bad. At first I thought that the eyes were not placed properly. Even after making the eyes perfectly symmetrical, the image still look odd when I flipped it. I was puzzled, so I continued to flip. Eventually it became clear that the nose was off center and warped to one side. Once I fixed the nose, flipping image didn’t reveal any problems.
I want to create an in-your-face image showing Betty Burro and Jimmy Jay climbing a sheer rock face. Betty is frustrated and angry because Buddy left them behind. Jimmy is afraid she’s going to lose her grip and fall on top of him. There’s a lot of foreshortening going on. I like the version on the right.
Jenny Jay doesn’t get a lot of screen time in my children’s picture book, but I’m going to spend some time on her image in the cover page to add a little more personality. I know that she’s a clever girl and deserves her own book, or two. While I’m working on her image, I’m also working on her friends, the two hitchhiking mice. I’m going to give them both argyle socks.
I’ve cut this section I’m working on. I cut it out of the 8000x4000 px master image. I’ll paste it back in when I’m finished with it.
