progress check

Sorry, no illo yet (thought I should be direct and up front about that).

Diane, the winner, came up with some great ideas for me to illustrate. At first she mentioned a few things that make her happy: "cozy, vintage, cottage, gingham, nature", which I thought was a nice way to think about it. Actually reading all of those words in succession really sums up her lovely illustration style to a T! Then she posted a fantastic photo of her 3 boys, and since she went to all the trouble of rummaging through the attic to find it (and the fact that it's a great photo of her very cute boys), I decided almost immediately that I would use the photo as the inspiration for the illo.

The process for me is that it usually takes me a few days of milling an idea through my head: thinking about what feelings the idea evokes, trying to think of ways to represent it, and waiting for a visual of it to appear in my foggy brain. Believe it or not this can take up to 4 days. I have a rule that I never look at other IF entries until I have something drawn, I do this because 1. I don't want to loose my idea or get it mixed up with something else I've seen, 2. If I see something else similar I don't that feeling like I've copied, even though I haven't, and 3. If I see really kick-ass illos, I'll be discouraged about doing one myself.

Anyway, once I start to see the idea in my head, I'll start sketching a few things out, working on composition and poses etc. Sometimes I'll take photo's of myself in a pose and draw (or sometimes trace) from that, This means that there is a whole collection of really really odd photos of myself hugging shoe boxes and stuff like that. I have a fear that one day they'll be leaked, and will end up in a trashy magazine under a headline that reads "New Psychosis Revealed!"

Once I have a sketch that I like I transfer it to my good paper, clean up the pencil lines and sometimes I make a few changes at this point. At this point I try to go away for a little while and think through some colour ideas. Then I come back and paint.


So where am I up to in this process? The beginning, hee. I'm still thinking through ideas, I'll do some sketches today, and If all goes well I'm hoping to fall into a roll and do the whole thing! Wish me luck! (I'm a bit nervous)


Also, thanks to Faun from the Red Button Tree for her cool advice, I'll be starting up a list for my Etsy store. So if you would like to be notified via email each time I add anything new to the store, you can be! (I'll let you know here as well). I'm on my way over to my Etsy Store now to add details of how to do this at the top of my shop, so head over there if you're interested.

Later alligator!