Alone in the Topiary Garden:

New #illustration. Peek at each stage in the process. Here you see #thumbnails of the #illustration idea.

I always say that no one can understand my thumbnails but me. That's OK because they're intended to help me work out my picture design and placement of elements. If an art director wants to see thumbnails, then I'll do cleaner, crisper thumbnails for him/her.

Next stage will be the under drawing. This will be an oil painting, so the drawing will be done to size (5.5"X8.5"—such as a book cover), then enlarged 200% in order to make painting it easier.

The narrative behind this is a girl briskly making her way out of a topiary garden full of odd characters and apparently also full of activity. I have some notes on my sketch in the upper right. While sketching, I had to decide what to include. What makes a good topiary? Flamingo, ostrich, urn, dolphin, dinosaur. I settled on the flamingo, ostrich, urn and way in the background, up high, will be an Egyptian, walking just like Egyptians always do.

Here's a help: the girl is in the lower right corner hustling out of the picture to the right. We, the viewers, are kind of low, looking up at her—that gives us a good underneath view of the topiaries. The ostrich (neck and head only) comes in from the left and is trying to nab her by the skirt.

That's all for now. Update on Old King Cole. I thought he'd be done and posted by tomorrow, but some of the small foreground detail is still wet, and it needs to dry so that I can finalize highlights and sharpen some edges.

Sorry for my cryptic opening and the pound signs (#). My blog is fed into my Twitter, and I want it to stay within 140 characters and contain good search term potential. The #s are supposed to help with that.

Rikki Panel 1 Finished

While developing my portfolio for children's illustration, I have drawn Rikki Tikki Tavi.

This is the first of three panels I plan to do. I haven't drawn in charcoal for many years and decided to get back into it to create a noir atmosphere and because it's so quick to get coverage in large areas, and easy to build up dark darks.

I haven't just drawn a full picture in a long time. I normally draw enough for a template for my digital work. As I drew, I relearned a lot of things. Trying to cast highlights back into shadow areas, which means to leave areas light or white. Going back and erasing out to get those highlights, or drawing back in with white pencil is just not as clean. Also, I had to get used to using one of those paper smudging stumps again in order to blend small detail areas. I think I was in junior high last time I fiddled with one of those.

One thing I'd like to overcome is the amount of sparkly white texture you can see throughout the dark areas. This was done on cold press 300 illustration board, medium texture, and I wonder if I went with the lighter texture, if it would still grab the charcoal as well.

The next pieces in this series will be Rikki first encountering the cobra Nag, in the garden under the tailor-bird's nest, and the deadly fight scene in the bathroom. We'll see.

The next posting should be the color piece I'm nearly done with for Old King Cole.

Rikki Line Art

Here's a peek at the line art for the illustration Rikki Tikki Tavi. I left the original art at Kinko's—of all things. I have to use their large format scanner to bring it down in size for these postings. I think the father's arm looks too wooden. But, that whole area will be almost totally in shadow—will try to fix, though. The final will be in charcoal.

Step 2 in OKC Illustration

Old King Cole is lined-out and ready for charcoal fill to develop the shadows and highlights. Then, I plan on a method I haven't used in about 6 years and hope I can pull it off: oil tints. First, the charcoal drawing will be sealed and then thin tints of oil paint will be applied; I'll lift out the areas of light with a kneaded eraser, building up, up, up. Hopefully, OKC will emerge very dimensional from a deep, warm, dark backdrop.

Art in the Family

I just got an email from my nephew (10 yrs.):

   "Uncle Nathan,

     I found a picture on the internet of Captain Rex, a clone trooper off of Star Wars and I drew this picture freehand as I looked at the one from the Internet. I thought you might like to see it."

    A few weeks ago, I asked my cousin Lois, who has recently "retired" from the Bay Area to Mazatlan to help establish Hospice there—to send me some of her work. She's taken up painting again. The light. Ah!

    I guess my grandma was the one who started it all. I have this piece (horses) in our bedroom. I didn't find out until she was gone that this is done in soils from the south. She loved the south and wouldn't have come back north I guess, if it weren't for the war and my grandfather's need for employment.

  I've been looking at that picture my whole life.