Best posts made by Jake Parker

Hi everyone!

My latest book comes out in about 5 months and my publisher said I could share the cover, so I thought I'd show you guys a step by step process of designing a cover for a children's book.

The 12 Sleighs of Christmas is written by Sherri Rinker and when I read the manuscript for it I gave my agent an enthusiastic YES I WANT TO DRAW THIS BOOK.

Briefly, it's about the elves going to fix Santa's trashed sleigh, but instead they decide to break into 12 teams and have a contest to see who can design the best new sleigh. They build a hotrod, locomotive, semi-truck, and snowplow sleighs, and much more. It was such a fun book to do. Probably the most enjoyable book I've done so far.

Alright, lets get down to business. Once the interior illustrations were sketched out my editor asked for some ideas for the cover.

Step 1) Idea Sketches
In this stage it's all blue sky ideas. If I haven't received any specific direction from the editor I usually have an "anything goes" attitude with these sketches, so I try to throw out a bunch of different directions.

The least amount of sketches I'll send is 3, and sometimes I'll send 10 if there's a lot of ideas floating around in my head. Usually 4-5 is a good starting point to get the creative gears moving on both the editorial and the creative sides.

Here's what I sent:

And here's the email I got back from my editor:

Great notes! I definitely had a clear direction I wanted to go now. It wasn't about what was in the book, but capturing the feeling of the book.

Step 2) Final Sketch Idea

I picked the most visually fun and accessable vehicle from the book and decided to make that the hero sleigh for the cover. It was also a sleigh that would prominently show Santa. I designed it in a way that showed motion and energy. And the title was designed in a way that felt very Christmassy. Sketched it up and sent it over to them:

And here's the email I got back from my editor:

It's approved! That's the best news. I've done covers where there's a lot more back and forth at this stage. I should not too that the ultimate authority on the cover design is the marketing team. They know what sells and what doesn't. So the "cover meeting" she talked about in the email is a group of editors, marekting people and art directors who decide what's the best direction to go with the book cover.

Now that I got the approval to go to final art I started to work on designing the back side. I wanted this to be a wraparound.

Step 3) Finish the Sketch

I thought it would be cool to see some of the other fantastic designs the elves made for Santa so I included them on the back:

I sent this in and got a big thumbs up from my editor and art director. Now it's on to final line art. At this point the team has seen my final art from some of the interiors that I've finished, so they don't need to see the cover until it's close to finished.

Step 4) Final Line Art

So far everything has been drawn digitally in Photoshop. It's easier and faster to work digitally at this stage since there's a lot of back and forth, erasing, and resizing things to fix the composition.

I draw in orange because I like how it looks.

An added benefit of drawing in orange is that when you print out the drawing to ink over it there's a stark contrast between the black ink line and the light orange. It makes it easier to clean the ink scan up.

Step 5) Inking

I inked this with THIS BRUSH PEN on THIS PAPER.

Step 6) Scan and Color Flats

I scan the inks at 300 ppi and bring them into photoshop. I won't get into my photoshop specifics here, but the linework gets cleaned up a bit and then I do flat colors. (or my assistant did the flat colors, I can't remember on this image)

Step 7) Color and Finessing

At this stage there's a little bit of back and forth as me and the art director or editor make everything "just right."

I add shadows, and highlights, I color hold some of the linework, I add effects and snow. I make it look cover worthy.

Step Proof Approval

I send in the final file, a 250MB PSD and they prep it for print. Then a month or so later I got this in the mail:

I check it to make sure the colors look fine, and they did. Once they've got my approval, it's sent to the printers!

Step 9) Hold Finished Book In Your Hands

This is my eighth children's book, and it's probably the one I'm most proud of. I put my ALL into this book. I can't wait to share some of the spreads from the interior. Thanks for checking this out, and let me know if you have ANY questions. I'm happy to answer them.

-Jake

Hi all,

Saw Wonder Woman this weekend and was inspired to do a drawing of her. Wanted to share the process here:

First a rough sketch in Photoshop to figure out the proportions, composition, and pose

Next I set that layer to about 40% and draw over it. This step is about figuring out anatomy and locking in that pose.

Then I drop that layer to about 40%, turn off the first layer, and draw on a new layer the details. I'll print this out and then go traditional from there.

I did a facebook LIVE video of the rendering. First colors, then inks. You can watch it here. About 45 min long:

https://www.facebook.com/jakeparkerart/videos/1533069573410490/

And here's the final piece:

@Clawson had an idea for a drawing challenge in June to draw a Kaiju every day for the month. I noticed a few other artists on Instagram heading up the challenge as well.

It's a fun idea, becasue giant monsters offer so many creative design opportunities. I thought I'd do one.

Here's my initial sketch (in photoshop)

Here's my final pencil under drawing (also in photoshop)

and here's my inked and watercolored final:

If you've got one, post it here!

Artwork by Tanner Garlick

Hi everyone!

We just dropped the first episode of our new podcast 3 Point Perspective.

MY ART IS GREAT, WHY WON’T ANYONE HIRE ME?

Many artists work hard and try to get there their work out there, hoping to break into the illustration world and then...nothing happens. No clients offering work. No e-mails. No phone calls. And they wonder why no one wants to hire them.

We offer our perspective on why you might not be getting hired (yet), and then go into great detail on strategies and give practical advice on overcoming that hurdle and really standing out.

We discuss:

• what might be missing in your work, and how to not miss the mark

• how to give yourself a self-audit and honestly judge your work, using Will’s 9-Square approach

• discovering specific principles to improve from looking at your heroes work

• why you should be copying and absorbing masters’ work

• getting feedback from a professional and creating a feedback loop

• the need for interest and storytelling in your work

• how to handle critique and the proper attitude to have

• how to be a more interesting person

All that and much more!

You can listen to the episode and read the show notes here.

This thread is to discuss this topic. Tell us:

• about your own experiences getting work.
• ideas you have for people struggling to find work.
• where you disagree with something we've said.
• what your main take away from this episode is.

All right, love to hear your thoughts everyone!

Hey Chip,

Great art you've been posting lately. I especially like the last one as I think you've given your work added dimension with the cast shadows. Really well done.

However, there's something I see you not doing in most of your pieces that flattens them out:

• Form shadows and light
• Occlusion shadows

Form shadows and form light are shadows and light that wrap around the form, they don't just exist on the edges. Here's an image of what I'm talking about:

Understanding how light and shadow define form directly rlates to having a solid understanding of the shapes you're drawing.

Those top 3 drawings should have A LOT more volume to them. Instead they feel kind of like paper cutout drawings.

Occlusion shadows are dark accents that occur where forms come close enough to each other that they crowd out the light. They leave a small dense area of shadow. You crazy guy there should have a lot more of these to define his shape a little more. I've added both form shadows and occlusion shadows to in a paintover below that illustrate this.

And here's a call out sheet specifically showing what's what.

Hope that helps. Keep posting! I'm seeing improvement with each post!

You guys did some incredible work for this month's contest. Every single entry had something to love about it. Whether it was the rendering or it had an engaging concept I really enjoyed them all and had a lot of fun judging this batch.

My apologies for being a bit late getting you the results of the contest. I managed the Inktober challenge all through October and have spent the last 3 weeks recovering and picking up the pieces of all the projects I had to pause while doing Inktober.

That said, let's get down to it and announce this month's winners.

Here's my judging criteria:

Concept - Is the idea creative, engaging, or unexpected in an intriguing way?
Design - How has the artist used proportion, repetition, balance, color, lighting, and contrast to create something unique, compelling, or beautiful?
Structure - Are the shapes and forms solidly built? Is the perspective right for the piece.
Rendering - Whether it's in color, black & white, or just line-work, what is the quality of the craftsmanship in the execution of the artists vision?

1st Place: @nyrrylcadiz
This one hit ALL my criteria. I love the concept that the monster is a child in a monster costume who is showing her love for her family...by writing on the walls.
I love the design of the character, the POV, and the lighting.
Everything looks solid, angles look right and in perspective with everything else.
And lastly the rendering is beautiful. Good work!

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2nd Place: @Gary-Wilkinson
I don't know how you made a 9 eye'd monster look worried, but you nailed it. Love the concept here and the lighting and rendering are solid. The composition is a bit too crowded for me, but it still works for the piece. Nice job!

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3rd Place: @andina-subarja
This one is just gorgeous to look at. I'm really digging the texture and flat designed look this piece has. And the character designs are super charming. One problem is the spider's outside legs read as a doorway at first.

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Honorable Mentions:
@KEWALKER
I love the rendering here. That smooth pencil texture is 100%.

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@Art-of-B
Great color and light on this piece too! Love all the kid's reactions. I want to see more of that monster!

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@carriecopa
What is this?! I want to read a comic in this world!

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@marek-halko
I really love the concept here.

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@ajillustrates
Nice inkwork!

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@Martha-Sue
This one cracked me up.

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@JDRpictures
Bonus points for making rotting corpses and monster dogs look ADORABLE.

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@Maureen
Really love the concept for this one. Wish the lighting was better.

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@JennyJones
Picture book please!

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@Naters-Calderone
Great comic page layout, character acting, and punchline. You're good at comics!

That was fun! Thanks to everyone who participated. Really proud of everyone!

Art by Tanner Garlick

Our newest podcast episode is available!

This episode is a grab back full of pro hacks. We get a lot of great questions from our listeners, and in this episode we go over some of those. We go over tips on developing an awesome process, productivity hacks, how to more wisely approach Inktober and other monthly art challenges, and our thoughts about student grade art supplies.

Click here to listen and to see the links.

Hope everyone is having a good Inktober so far!

This is a great question @smceccarelli, and it's one that I've been thinking a lot about lately.

I'm on reason 3 of why I do what I do. I kind of feel like each of these reasons is a layer of cake piled one on top of the other. Let me explain.

Reason 1: Doing it for me

The early years. I had a knack for drawing early on...but I admit, when I look at my early drawings they look no more special than any other kid who liked to draw. However, I got a lot of positive reinforcement from my parents and classmates, and that gave me confidence to to improve. I remember getting a rush when I would create things, sometimes with my art, sometimes with LEGO, sometimes it was just combining my toys into new creations. I loved putting something cool, that had my creative fingerprint on it, out into the world. I began to crave that feeling and I found myself in a cycle:

• step one: put myself in a position to get the creative rush
• step two: feed off the rush creating something as awesome as I could create
• step three: get positive feedback and reinforcement from parents, teachers, and peers on the thing I created

At every step I was feeling good things, and that's why I did what I did, to feel good. To keep those feelings coming I kept repeating the cycle.

What happens when you do something a lot, over and over and over again? You get good at it.

By the time I was in high school I was the best artist at the school. I was known as the kid who was good at drawing and was sought out to draw things for people. I designed a bunch of t-shirts, I was president of the Art Club (and we went on to win club of the year that year). I won the artist of the year award my senior year. So drawing and art was a central part of my identity.

Reason 2: Doing it for my responsibilities

When it was time to go get a job and make something of myself I realized I wasn't qualified, nor interested in doing anything that wasn't creative. I soon found myself working for an animation studio, getting married, and having a kid all in the space of 3-4 years in my early 20's.

Now doing what I was doing meant doing the thing I was good at, and letting personal satisfaction take a back seat to getting a steady paycheck. For about 12 years I grinded at different studios working on projects that I was sort of interested in (I wasn't super excited designing foliage for background environments in talking animal movies full of fart jokes). But I was getting better at my craft and supporting a family.

I was doing what I did to support a family and a lifestyle.

But I still craved the rush from phase 1, so I did a lot of personal side projects that allowed me to go through those 3 steps. I posted on forums, then blogs, then social media, then got work published. I got the rush of creating things I thought were awesome, and were things that I wanted to create AND got a lot of positive reinforcement from my peers.

Reason 3: Doing it to for the community

While the rush, and the money are still a part of what I do, I’m finding myself more and more motivated to share what I do with others as a way to improve their life on some level. That’s why I like teaching, I like making youtube videos that unpack issues/problems facing creative people. I like drawing things that have a story to them; they aren’t just pretty pictures, but hopefully they make someone stop and take someone to a place of imagination.

If I have a mission now, it’s to help elevate people’s ability to create good things. I want people to have that awesome feeling you get when you make something, I want them to get positive feedback from peers (that’s why I love what’s going on here on this forum) and I would love it if they could someday turn it into a career or a way to supplement their income.

So, to wrap it up. At first I was drawing because I wanted to do what was good for me.

Then that turned into drawing because I wanted to do what was good for those I was immediately responsible for.

Then that turned into drawing because I want to do what is good for the larger community.

All of this said, there's nothing wrong for remaining in one phase or another, or a combination of phases. If you draw because it is completely gratifying to you, you don't need any other reason to do it.

Anyway, thanks for this question. You helped me nail down some things I've been thinking a lot about and haven;t quite put into words until now.

Hey all,

I did an interview for the Creator at Large Podcast that some of you might find interesting:

http://www.creatoratlarge.com/podcast-archive/jakeparker-019

Check it out, and let me know if you have any questions.

Jake

Art by Cory Shaw

Our most recent episode just dropped, to listen or to read show notes click here.

Everyone wants to improve and try new things, but why is change so hard? Sometimes we box ourselves into a certain identity or style and feel like we can't deviate, or we get comfortable and fear failure. In this episode we discuss why consistent improvement and change is so vital to creatives, and go over practical things you can do to create lasting changes in your life.

Feel free to share in this thread thoughts, questions, or ideas about this topic!
Thanks everyone for making the SVS community such a great place, you guys are awesome.

Art by Braden Hallett

Our newest episode just dropped, click here to listen to it and to see the links from this episode.

Feel free to use this thread to share other thoughts you have about transitioning to a career in art, success stories, or to ask questions!

Thanks you guys, we hope you having a great rest of your week!

@jimsz Hi Jim,

Time for some tough love.

You haven't gotten that breakthough because your art is dated and unprofessional.

If you want to have a breakthrough, you need to create breakthrough art.

Your style is very much informed by the Precious Moments look. It's a look that was established in the 70's by Samuel J. Butcher and it really hasn't evolved since then. Your work looks like you learned to draw from absorbing a lot of Precious Moments art and other art from the same style.

Your art also doesn't have the polish and confidence that the art of a professional has. I see a lot of unsure linework and basic application of photoshop colors.

Here's your artwork side by side illustrations I pulled off of Amazon's list of bestselling children's books from 2016. Look at the difference:

Your work just doesn't hold up to the art of people who are making a career as professional illustrators. You can't expect a breakthrough until you are creating art this good.

That was the tough part...here's the love part:

You totally got this. You CAN do this. You haven't wasted your time or energy all these years. You've proven that you can draw A LOT, and that you have some charming imaginative ideas. But you need to level up. Big time.

I think you can have a drastic improvement in your work and style in about a year and a half. It's not going to be easy, but it's doable.

Here's what you need to do.

Step 1) Re-wire your brain.

You've been drawing in that style for so long it's how your brain thinks it's supposed to draw. But in order to be competitive out there in the marketplace you're going to need to draw in a more contemporary style. Here's what you do:

Copy 20 artists.

Find 20 contemporary artists and copy TEN of their drawings. Make as close of a replica as you can of their style, their drawing proportions, their colors, and their rendering technique.

That's 200 drawings. Finished that? Good.

Now pick the 5 you liked the best out of those 20 and straight up copy 20 more drawings from them. That's 100 more drawings.

What this is doing is telling your brain that you don't have to draw in your old style any more. It's a lot like training your non dominate hand to draw.

Step 2) Develop YOUR new style

With out looking at the artists you studied in step 1, draw 50 new characters. Dogs, children, old ladies, giraffes, whatever. Draw 50 of them. Make sure you don't fall back on your old style. try to lean in on the other styles you have been copying.

Ok, now take your 10 best drawings out of those 50 and draw that character again 10 different times. Different poses, different point of views.

By now you should be narrowing in on a new drawing style.

Take all the SVS classes related to character design and poses. Do all the assignments in the classes.

Step 3) Learn photoshop.

Go through all the SVS photoshop classes we have. And do everything we ask in those classes.

Start coloring your characters from Step 2.

Step 4) Props and environments

repeat steps 1-3 but do props and envronments instead of characters. Cut all the amounts in half. So instead of 20 artists copy 10.

take the persepcitve class, and the designing environment class. Also the composition class. And wattch the chapters in the Childrens book class on illustration.

Step 5) A new you

Take everything you've learned and make a new portfolio with 20 finished illustrations:

10 Character designs
10 Illustrations that tell a story of some kind (you can use old SVS 3rd thursday prompts for ideas)

Ok, I hope that helps!
What's great is you already know how to draw, and it looks like you have the work ethic to achieve this leveling up. Please post your progress here. I'm looking forward to seeing you grow and learn.

Last bit of advice, don't obscure your work with a watermark over the front of it. That's also very unprofessional.

Here's a progress chart I made in google drive for the book I'm currently working on. Thought it might be helpful to see how I break down a picture book into manageable chunks. As you can guess I'm a visual person, so seeing the amount of green that's on there helps me know exactly where I'm at with the project.

I get a little high every time I change a square from orange to green!

What do you guys do to help keep track of your progress?

Art by Tanner Garlick

Have you ever wondered what happens before an illustrator is offered a book project, or what happens after of the illustrations are complete? There is a lot more to illustrating a children's book than just drawing and painting. In this episode we will go through the whole process of how a story goes from an idea all the way to a finished book, and what it does all along the way. We'll also cover some of the nitty gritty such as how advances work and other practical details in the process.

Our latest episode just launched! Check it out here.
Feel free to discuss any insights or questions in the comments below.

Good questions.

I do it all myself. I scan the artwork, fix it up in photoshop and print it on an Epson R2000. Epson has a range of papers you can print on and everything looks amazing...even the cheaper paper.

The paper and ink are all archival quality and are guaranteed for 100 years I think.

The printer is about $800 but it payed for itself after selling 20-30 prints.

Most of my customers don't even care about the archivalness of my prints. They just want a cool picture for their man cave. But the quality matters to me, so that's why I use the epson.

I have a link to my printer (and all my art tools) here: http://mrjakeparker.com/tools

@Rapteev I have had that feeling a lot over the years, and I still get feelings of inadequacy. There's some days I think being an independent artist is too hard, that I should just quit and go work a day job and just try to do this on the side. Which I had to do once.

And here's the thing, that's not bad, and you're not a failure if you go that route.

When I went to get my day job, I just told myself it was temporary and that I would continue to work towards my goals until I could do this full time again. And instead of working towards big success, I counted all the little successes: A freelance job, getting 100 new followers, finishing Inktober. Eventually all these little successes added up and I was able to quit my job (after 15 months) and go back to working full time as an independent artist. It's still rocky some days/weeks though. There's still days where I have no idea what I'm doing. But I keep counting the small successes and piling them on top. By focusing on that I have the motivation to keep going.

I hope that helps!

Here's another one I did today.

Concept sketches:

Loose Sketch:

Final pencil underdrawing:

and here's my inked, markered, and watercolored final:

Art by Tanner Garlick

How do you balance family, work, personal growth, exercise, hobbies, etc? Work/life balance is one of those things that is universal and something that we all deal with every day. We get a lot of people asking us about this and in this episode we share about how to work more intensely, about the need to get your finances in order, our schedules and tips for scheduling, and why you need to have side interests and live a life full of meaningful experiences.

To listen to our newest podcast episode, please click here!

What experiences do you guys have with this? Any life hacks or tips that you would offer to the community? Please share in this thread if you have something you feel to share with the community!

Art by Gary Wilkinson

Our most recent episode just dropped, click here to listen to it and to see links from this episode.

The foundation of a great illustration is a great concept. So often, as artists, we want to rush through the conceptual phase of an illustration to get to rendering things out and making it look amazing, often grazing over the concept or heart of our piece. In this episode we go over the importance of a solid concept, share some of our thought process for coming up with good concepts, and share advice while going over some common mistakes to avoid when coming up with a concept.

I have those days too.

If it's really effecting my work then I stop drawing and I take a day to be creative in other areas. I'll make a video, or write a blog post, or work on my website, or send out a mail chimp post. I do something that still advances my career, but doesn't require me to draw.

I also review my work that I like. That shows I know what I'm doing. I'll remind myself that I am capable of creating good stuff. If I did it before then I'll do it again.

And lastly I'll remind myself not to compare myself to others. That this is only a race against myself. And that as long as I'm 1% better than yesterday then I'll eventually get to where I want to be.

I don't know if feelings of inadequacy are associated with creative block, or vice versa, but I think the ways I outlined in the other thread about how to deal with creative block can also help here too.