One of the many nights my sister and I spent hidden away in blanket forts reading fairy tales by flashlight. (Watercolor and Colored pencil on Arches 300lb cold press)
I tried to keep it simple since painting glowy light is very new to me, but might revisit this again after I watch some more classes and feel like I can add all the things I wanted to.

Keep to the path through the wood and don’t ever stop!

Materials are watercolor, Colored pencil, cut paper, and chalk. I don’t have any digital capabilities so I’m experimenting with ways to use traditional art and still have the depth and dimension I want.

I asked my 10 year old what she would do in a mushroom village and she didn’t even hesitate, “play hide and seek!” So, here it is. Hide and seek in the mushroom village. I should have done the whole thing bigger. Sorry if it’s a bit blurry. It’s watercolor, colored pencil and cut paper. No digital because I don’t know how. ️

I’m not sure if I took this one too far... but I got a little excited. Does a poster style mashup with Labyrinth count? I did a few more than 4 characters.

I finished my first master study. I have had this version of Mary Poppins with illustrations by Julia Sarda in my library for a long time. She is one of my favorites And, since I am scared, I started with a spot illustration. This one took me about 5 hours. It’s definitely not perfect, but I learned so much… especially about how to use my ipad! My goal is to draw everyday this year, and to fit in as many master studies as aI can. I’ll probably do another full page Julia Sarda and then move on to someone else.
Her’s is the top. Mine is the bottom. I did not drag her actual colors from a picture in procreate, but tried to match them as best as I could with the book open next to me. So hard! But so exciting! I’m glad I finished it.

I've actually been planning and sketching and working this one out in my head for quite a while. I love cut paper and tiny things so I made this candy tin illustration/ diorama (inspired by Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere")this month. It feels like you open the lid on a tiny magical world. I'll definitely be making more. It took a lot of planning to figure out how I wanted the layers and then I had to paint and place all these impossibly small elements, but it was really fun.

Here’s mine! Aside from seeing the growth over a year, highlights for me include actually finishing the Draw 50 things assignment, having Mindy Kahling share my sketch on her Instagram, and participating in MerMay.

I also can't figure out how to post more than one photo at a time. Grrrrr. Me and technology.

Oh man, Yes to all of this. I have heard so many people say that “if you are a writer, you need to write everyday!” And, “if you are an artist, you need to draw every day!” But, I also read a book recently called “DEEP WORK” where they talked about our limited capacity. And, for those of us who can’t do art full time, who feel the need to make it, but have to do it on the edges of all the other more pressing things... The call to do it “everyday” no matter what, can be really discouraging. It can feel like failure, but burn out is real. And, experiencing it, doesn’t make us any less as artists. There are days when I just can’t, and there are days when my family can’t or doesn’t want to give me space or time in my studio. It’s real, but its a season.

@Abigail-Hookham that I gorgeous. I don’t really have anything to say except that I love it! Is it done traditionally?

@carlianne haha! Love it!

Here’s a few more master studies I did this month. These were super fun because they are all pretty hilarious designs. I wanted to do a few of these as well as some master studies of full illustrations. I was kind of doing this as a bit of extra homework to get my brain in the right space for the character design class.

There are actually a lot of really great picture books that are sad. “I’ll love you forever” and “grandpa green” are two that come to mind. You could ask your library if they know of more and go check them out. I agree that you can address hard stuff with kids books as long as you do it well and tastefully. Kids go through stuff too and I think a lot of people write books to help us understand what’s happening or that it’s okay to be sad... The other stuff that I’m thinking about are the last 3 “toy story” movies and the whole movie “UP”. The audience is clearly kids, but I can’t make through without crying.

@Ari-Sorokin that makes sense. It’s just a matter of “filling the creative bank account”, as Jake would say. And, its great that you are trying this stuff. I just did my first master study and it was not easy!
I did a little drawing on top of Tony’s piece to show you how I would try try to approach it. I hope it helps. The pink lines outline the negative space around his head. When you look at that instead of him, you can see more accurately how much of the space he’s taking up. The green lines are about relationships. His eyes are about 1/4 of the way down the page, the right shoulder goes off at about the halfway point. Also, the corner of his mouth should be in line with the right back thruster and where his collar meets his other shoulder should line up with the other thruster... I didn’t mark them all. You can also see that his hair part is just left of center at the top of the page...
Also, the purple lines are angles. I just hold a pencil up to these and then to my paper to see if they match. Usually when I focus on all three of these (negative space, relationships and angles) I can get things put in mostly the right place. And then you can apply what you know about anatomy, color and light and all that.

I love the energy of 1a!! I also love the emotion of 3b. Those are the two that are reading the clearest to me. The compositions are great and they give the right feels, I think. I love those books!

@Ari-Sorokin
I do have a couple things, but I am also wondering why your mentor chose Tony Santigo? Lee teaches a class on finding your style and he talks about putting together a dream portfolio and then doing master studies based off of that. Basically it’s professional work that you wish you had done - the stuff you are aiming at. I agree with the person who said it’s not the best thing to try and do a copy of work that is problematic. Tony has some cool pieces, but he doesn’t look to be master level.
That aside, Do you have a subscription to the svs classes? There are a few things Jake teaches in the “how to draw everything” class that I found really helpful. One of them was to draw the picture upside down. It helps your brain to focus on the shapes you were making and stop thinking about trying to draw “Luke Skywalker” or whatever else. Another trick is to draw the negative spaces. And you can use your pencil or a stick to make sure you are getting the angles right. That’s the one that actually helps me the most. It really helps with placement of objects inside a picture. Jake has us draw a folding chair for that particular exercise and I was amazed that I could pull off drawing something by only drawing the negative space. It helps with portraits too! A lot. If you don’t have a subscription, I would look up both of those things on YouTube. I’m sure there are some tutorials. I could show you in a quick draw over what the negative space looks like too. Hope that’s helpful!

@carrieannebrown thank you! she is amazing!I love her secret garden illustrations too.

@Emma-Echter welcome! I have pursued my dreams of being a writer/ illustrator because of my kids too. ️The whole world of children’s books is so inspiring. Your progress picture is amazing! Can’t wait to see more!