My “style” occurred naturally after trying to force a style for a year or so. I gave up trying to draw a certain way, and just made art the way I liked. I realized that style is very much rooted in the steps a person takes from the beginning of a piece to finish. Prior to that realization, I thought style was merely an intential thing.

My first step is to not care about the drawing. I know that that is not a good thing, but I really just don’t care. It is why I didn’t participate in inktober. I like my drawings to be loose, and the objects to be more shapes than anything. So if it is a moon, a cat, and a building, I try my best to make sure the image is designed with shapes more than “characters”. I’ve noticed that the more the shapes are correct, the better the final painting is. I also have fallen in love with painting more than drawing, and would love to one day just paint without drawing at all, but that may never happen.

My second step is to paint the underpainting. I always find the colors I want, and find the warmest color and create a value scale with that one color. I work out all of the lighting, and shadows, and the more time I spend on this process the better the final image is.

My mindset at this stage is that I have a very detailed underpainting, and I now have to mess it up a bit. I start dropping in scanned textures. I like watercolor textures, stuco textures, bark, skin etc. I try my best not to consider where I am placing the textures. I want it to look accidental, and in many ways, I want it to ruin the fine details a bit. I like knowing that all of that work is getting covered up a bit, and only hinted at being very controlled.

Then I move onto placing color on the image. This is the hardest step for me. Balancing color is not a strength of mine, so I tend to spent a lot of time complaining (important part of my process) to my wife that I am a fraud haha. Then it somehow starts to work, and I zero in on the details.

The final step is the Highlights. I go in and somewhat identify shapes that have been lost in the previous steps that I want to emphasize. I hit the parts that need better lighting, and the parts that need better shadows.

That is basically what I do every time. I am always looking for another weird thing to add to it all, but so far I like this process the best.

@davidhohn Awesome, thanks!

I am nearing the end of a book dummy I have been working on for an interested literary agent, and have yet to design a cover. Is this something that is done later if the book is sold, or does the agent want to see how the cover would look? For some reason it doesn’t make sense for me to include it.

I split the screen between my webrowser/pinterest and procreate, and then I can look at a bunch of reference photos.

I have a book dummy that I am finishing up, and an agent is waiting for the submission from me who is also friends with me on facebook. Is it unwise to share an image from the book dummy? I want to see how it is received before sending it, and also, due to the amount of work I have put into this project I have had very little work to share recently, so I was hoping to use a single image from this.

Any thoughts?

Looks great. I am actually writing a very similar book. So freaking strange lol. Maybe it will be a year full of pig books.

I am streaming via facebook and it has been fine. It might have already been updated, however it isn’t showing in my podcast list on my iOS devices.

As for the topic: I love this topic. Ever since I was a kid I have dreamed of having a caldecott sticker on my art for some reason. It probably has to do with the fact that all of the books I liked had that sticker on them when I was a kid. I had no clue why some had them, I just assumed it meant that I should read them because I would most likely love them.

However, idk if I would want to be that artist known for that one work you did all those years back. Seems like it could dwarf everything else you do.

She’s been such a valuable SVS artist. I am happy that she got recognized.

@will-terry I am so happy for everyone here at SVS. It has been great to see everyone moving forward.

I just did my first professional job with Highlights magazine. They gave me a full spread, which was not stressful at all :-). That will be out in December. The best part was how the Netflix documentary on the inner working of highlights launched the day I started on the final painting, and I got to listen to the AD I was working with stress out while I painted. That was surreal.

I have other things in the works, and will know in early October. I love seeing everyone here have success.

@bichonbistro Thanks for the nice compliments. I use a lot of texture, and I do not use many tools to paint faster. I treat it like a piece of paper, and limit myself to using basic brushes for painting, and for the details I use the basic pencil. I think the trick is that when I use texture I try my best to be spontaneous. One thing traditional has over digital are the accidents that come with it, such as not being able to control the water flow completely when doing watercolor painting, as well as exactly how each brush stroke will look when painting with oils. So when I drop in texture, I try my best to turn off my brain and just go with it. I start warping the scanned image without much thought, and when something clicks I stop, and I try to make sense of it.