I have been keeping up with most of the posts here, even though I have not had much chance to write/post myself.

The project I continue to work on, with scenes that features the photos of kids transformed into classic stories, is going really well.

I really can see so much progress in my work and pull upon all of the skills I have learned from the countless hours of watching (or listening to while drawing) the classes here. Thanks to the SVS folks for such quality courses and guidance.

I wish you all a very Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

I will leave you with this piece I finished yesterday. It features lucky little preschooler, Victor, from the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Disabled, who gets to go on the most magical ride of the year as Santa's helper!

I am very envious! .

I got the following from a friend via facebook message earlier today:

"I've got a potential client for you... a colleague/friend of mine is editing a book, and he needs an artist to create about 20 line art illustrations for the book. He's envisioning them as quick-sketch sort of illustrations that visualize the various storylines - nothing in great detail (perhaps 30 minutes per illustration, that sort of thing).

Nearly all would be old western scenes, such as a couple in a buckboard, 2 men on horseback, an artist painting a western street scene... Does this sound like something you might be interested in?

I must've talked you up well, because once I finished describing your work, my friend said, "I don't think I can afford someone like that!" (smile emoticon) He doesn't have a huge budget but there is a budget!

Let me know if you'd like to learn more and I can connect the two of you. (He can send you a sample chapter and more information). Hope all is well on your end!"

Now I know my friends heart is in the right place and it does feel good to think that folks speak highly of me/my work. But you know what felt even better - politely saying No to this entire thing.

A few months ago I would have jumped on something like this and sold myself short in the process. I am currently working my way through two self published author books now, that I know will never make me a proper return on my huge investment of time to complete them. I have long been plagued by being an amiable personality type - friends with everyone, people pleaser etc. The problem with that is I continue to learn everyone else may end up happy when I do that but not me.

And I have learned so much from the you tube videos of @will-terry and this class from @lee-white, now to know that my time will be much better spent working on my portfolio, my own personal projects and staying the course to get proper work via publishers someday. And that the road to being successful in this business (and in life) sometimes means you have to say No! Politely but still No.

I never felt so good saying No to anyone ever. Because saying NO to this was really saying YES to myself!

All of these recent posts of folks sharing there water color sketchbook pieces - made me want to share some of mine.

Last year I started taking a little time now and then to go out into the world and attempt to do a sketch and then watercolor it on site.

I had received a little travel pan of watercolor paints and a water brush as a gift and wanted to give it a try. I had also been to an illustration intensive featuring Matt Faulkner in which he went over some of the basics of illustration and he talked about things like always having a little blue in your brown and a little brown in your blue to add a cohesive feeling to paintings - or at least that was how he approached his watercolors.

So the first day I was meeting the author of the book series I illustrate at a Panera so I arrived early and gave it a go. I was a bit nervous about doing any drawing/painting out in public like that - and I certainly did not want people to feel like I was constantly staring at them as I was going about this but I learned that you have to quickly get down the basics as people come and go and the scene changes in the blink of an eye.

The resulting image looked like this:

All kinds of things are wrong with the perspective and how I handled the paints but it was a fun learning experience and I decided to post it at the time on my social media sites and got a pretty positive response.

So that gave me the encouragement to try it again and again.

Then next stop was at my local library:

I sat at an empty table and picked a spot that included things in my view that I could use in the sketch - desk, bookshelves, window with view outdoors etc. I had to edit a bunch out of my line of site to keep it simple and then I just started trying to have fun with adding in color for shadows and shading and again had fun with it. People would pass by and I could tell they were looking at what I was doing but I was so focused on the image that it did not bother me as much. Posted this one on social media and again folks responded positively.

Next I wanted to try and capture this modern glass type building near my house. It was a rainy day so I pulled into a parking lot across the street and sketched from inside my car. I also got some of the base colors down while sitting in my car - but then drove home and finished at my table because it just was not that easy for a bigger guy like me to try and paint on my steering wheel.

This was also a great time to try and start using that blue/brown mix I had learned about because of the gloomy day, the colors of the building etc.

For some reason people really responded to this one - and so that further pushed me to take these to the next level. Which to me was to try a sketch of a far more well known landmark. I had been taking an Adobe Illustrator course at the School of the Art Institute in downtown Chicago so I decided to drive into the city early and walk a few block over to the famous State St and do a sketch of the well known Chicago Theater.

I found this great spot across the street that allowed me to get the now blooming tulips into the scene and just for fun I added in the tree limb with the bird to put something else into it that brought nature into this otherwise urban jungle.

It was a nice sunny day and the light was doing all kinds of fun things to the buildings and the colors and I really took my time on this one and I think for me it was a bit of a breakthrough on how to better handle some of the colors/shading etc. Here again I really used that blue/brown quite a bit on the buildings and then let the reds/yellows really pop out against them.

Well when I posted this one - people really went crazy about it. And that is what is so fun about social media - if its working in your favor it really fuels you to keep doing more and pushing yourself. Sure these may not be the most technically proper watercolor sketches ever - but those who follow me responded well and I was learning quite a bit about their likes and my skills all at the same time.

Next up I did some research on historical buildings in my own town and came across this really cool mansion (which is now used as a banquet facility so it is kept up so nicely). I did this one standing out front and using the wrought iron fence to balance my my sketchbook and do the drawing and painting. Again it was a fantastically sunny spring day and while I know I clearly overworked the browns of the building and it got too dark and away from me - I still had fun with the details. I did have to go back and add some white gouache when I got home to make the little flowers and the water fountain pop. Not sure if that is frowned upon in the watercolor world but hey - this was my little sketchbook, right?

When I shared this one online - I found that one of my friends grandmother was best friends with the original owner of the mansion and she remembers playing there as a kid. Later on she actually got married there - so she was in love with this one. I printed out a copy and sent it to her and she framed it and has it hanging in her house - that was kind of cool!

The last one I worked on, was by special request from one of the social media followers - they asked for me to do the Buckingham Fountain in downtown Chicago. So I was up for the challenge and really loved working with the tones in the water on this one.

My sky got a bit too gritty - don't think I was patient enough or either that or the sun was drying things up a bit quicker - I can not recall. This time I brought some of that white gouache with me and did that on site once it had dried a bit. But it really was fun using those blues and greens and browns in the reflecting water.

Because I was getting such nice response - I actually thought about how I might be able to turn these into products to sell online and toyed with the idea of using a service that can print images on glass. I ordered a sample of the Chicago Theater piece and I loved it in the raw sunlight. I have still been playing around with turning into a back light shadow box of sorts - but found I am not crazy about all of the wood working it involves and I sort of stalled out on what to do about that. I could probably just offer these as glass sun catchers or something - but the price for that process is a bit high and I was not sure if folks would pay for that. I probably need to revisit that however - buy a few put them online and see what happens.

Hi All,

For those of you who have been following me on here for a while, you know that I work on these images of real children (many who have health and physical challenges). The idea of this ongoing project is to make it look like the kids have found themselves in the land of a fairy tale. I have shared some others in the past including Cinderella and Rapunzel.

One of the most recent pieces I was asked to work on features a young girl (12yo) who fell ill around Thanksgiving only to discover she has a rare and aggressive form of cancer. She has already started undergoing various procedures and treatments but was feeling up to a photoshoot about a week ago. She requested to be Dorothy so they got her the costume and her Mom and Dad stood in as two of the characters we would make hear appear to be arm in arm with (Also she needs there support as the treatments leave her week and she mostly travels via wheelchair right now so she does not fall. Cancer sucks!)

Anyway I wanted to share this project with you as I always see flaws and areas I know I can get better in, but on this one I also see so many improvements over past pieces, all based on tips/tricks I have picked up in the SVS classes, crtiques and forums!

So to start out with here is an example of the type of photo I am provided to work from:

I begin by masking away everything but the young girl and starting to just do the basic sketch elements of where backgrounds and characters may go.

You will see here I was using my shapes to form out the bodies of the other characters - this was part of what had prompted me to realize I should really work on gesture drawings. And while much of that gesture work took place after I had done the sketch for this piece (as I needed to turn this around rather quickly as they wanted to get her copies before her next round of treatments to give out to the medical staff with her autograph on them). But I know for future pieces all of the gesture work I am doing behind the scenes will definitely help me at this stage in the process.

While trying to explore the setting - the client asked me to try the traditional look of all four characters arm in arm skipping along the yellow brick road as shown in version A. They also asked me to have the wizard in the background as if he is waving them good bye and sending them home. A bit of a positive thought that this young girl goes home healthy soon as well.

I had really liked the Scarecrow in this version - he felt light and happy which I enjoyed.

But I also sketched another varation with him off to the side and slightly ahead of the group. Originally he was just waving them on as shown here in version B.

But then when I thought about it more - if they had already been to see the wizard they would have earned their awards from him and that allowed me to change up a few more things as shown in version D.

I changed up the arms on Lion to give him a bit more pep in his step. I removed the Tin Man's axe and had him holding up his new heart. And I put the diploma in the hand of the Scarecrow and also worked in the more animated foot positioning which I liked much better.

The client approved the sketch and I started in on coloring the background first and then worked my way through each of the characters.
You will noticed that I also added the braided hair onto Dorothy (that was a request of the young lady herself - as she had on a hairpiece/cap in the photo but really wanted the full Dorothy look).

It took a while to create the Emerald City, all those spires and individually placed sparkles. I always feel like rocks/mountains/cliffs should be so easy - but I can not tell you how long I spent working on them. I still see samples of others work online that I like more, but I do see significant improvement in these over some I have done in the past. Plus I have completed stopped using black/white for highlights and shadows on anything - I color pick I change the colors/hues and really play around with what will have the most impact. I also like to adjust the layer type to dodge, multiply, overlay and see what sort of impact those may have.

I took my time drawing in the highlights and shadows for each yellow brick, I pulled in color to add shadow towards the edges for a bit of a pop on the road overall.

I really had fun working in soft/subtle clouds into the sky and creating that faint rainbow. I also used some atmosphere in the fields/cliffs in the background to make them lighter and appear further away - something I had not been doing before.

The filed itself has had drawn as well as texture layers applied to give the idea of grass without being literal so it was not overly distracting. Same for the patches of pink/red poppies. I just wanted to suggest they are there not make them a focal point.

I did my best to avoid any/all line work that was not necessary on the characters so they did not look like the traditional 2D animation style I used to use, and that was pointed out as an area I need to work on resolving on here by Lee and at a portfolio review critique at an SCBWI event. And then with the main characters I really tried to make them look different in terms of textures as well. The tin man has hints of rust but still has that smooth metal like surface. The lion is furry etc.

I made some minor changes from the sketch (the Wizard is smaller so as to appear more in scale with the road and distance from the characters.

Oh one other thing I did - I put some blue into their shadows to make it a bit cooler. Before I know I would have done those in some shade of black or gray - so after watching the Marco Bucci videos and him talking about cooler colors for shadows - that is what I am trying to do from now on.

All in all I think this is probably some of my best work to date. Not saying that I still don't wish I was even better than I am now - but I can see I am improving all the time, trying to absorb all the info I can and get better with each new piece I work on.

Areas I am still having a hard time with on each piece I work on:

• all of the little details - small face on the wizard where the brush can never get small enough - or I am just zooming in and worrying about it too much. But I also know that these will be turned into 40" prints for display at some point and at that size the WIzard's face will have more impact.

• trying not to make everything look soft/airbrushed

• worried I may rely on textures too much

• worried that while I can recreate scenes/characters that exist already - that I really struggle on coming up with my own designs. Relying on photo references too much in all the work I do.

• wondering how you learn to make better paintings - especially on the environment items like mountains, or fields or patches of flowers as I had to do in this piece. I look at samples of work I like but can not yet deconstruct them in my mind to figure out how they reached their end point.

I have seen a few other post where folks shared a piece of their work before they began taking classes on SVS and after.

I have been working on an ongoing project which features photos of real kids in illustrated storybook/fairty tale/nursery rhyme themes.

This has been going on for a year now - so my work has evolved and grown (at least I hope that is the case) along the way.

The first piece I worked on for this project was Humpty Dumpty.

And the most recent one I completed is Wee Willie Winkie.

I am still working on getting better at drawing - perspective is sometimes still a real challenge for me and so is coming up with character designs and posing.

Where I think I have made my biggest improvements are in my understanding of both color and light. Some from the SVS courses, but my real "aha" moment was the little segment @Lee-White shared during one of the 3rd Thursday's. Something about his demo hit me and I have not looked at colors or lighting the same since. I especially am seeing things in real life, that I never noticed or was trained to look for before. And all of that is definitely pushing me to new levels.

Thanks to the SVS team and everyone here on these forums - I learn from each and everyone of you and the feedback we provide to each other.

I wonder what my work will look like a year from now? Better get back to working on it

Hi Everyone!

In the fall of last year I was selected to be the Illustrator in the Spotlight for the IL SCBWI Newsletter called the Prairie Wind.

It was such an honor to be selected and I had so much fun answering the questions they included for the article.

It takes a few months after it comes out before you are allowed to share/reprint it - so I am very excited to be able to do that here and now with all of you.

SVS has played a significant role in my personal growth and development as an artist (which I mention in the article) and all of you amazing artists here in the forum have inspired and continue to inspire me every single day. And you also challenge me to get better with each new piece I create, because all of your work is so incredible.

So please know how much I THANK and appreciate all of you!

This article was first published in The Prairie Wind, the newsletter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Illinois. If you would like to see the full Fall 2016 issue or previous issues please go to: http://illinois.scbwi.org/prairie-wind-2/

I really enjoyed this challenge as it forced me to really be mindful of a simple color scheme and also pay closer attention to values.

I love the look of paper cutout art and decided I wanted to recreate that look on this scene. I also like to imagine that this could be a holiday window at a major department store - wouldn't that be fun.

The scene include me, my dog Annie, the rabbits that she constantly chases in the yard and my house back in the distance.

(which I am also using as my Christmas card this year)!

I will create a post to include my original sketch and some of my steps.

But thanks to @Leontine and @Rob-Smith for putting this challenge together, I really enjoyed it.

After @Damien-Rambacher recommended the site www.QuickPoses.com on another thread on here the other day I decided to give it a try.

I have taken formal art classes but yet never had a single figure drawing class nor have I done any live model type of drawing before. I know I am way behind in that regards.

So this seemed like a great way to start for now until I have a chance to go to a live drawing session and give that a try.

I used the default one minute for each pose as I felt like that would be enough time to get the basic shapes without allowing me to try and go into detail (my constant problem).

I noticed after I got going that I started to pull on the info Will/Jake share in some of the classes here, regarding the bean shape and it really helped me visualize the torso's much better and also helped me figure out the torso when the pose of the model was more distorted or covered partially by an arm/leg etc.

This was a brand new sketchbook - and I am going to use it solely for continuing to practice this type of figure drawing until it is filled up.

I am also hoping it will help me break through some metal blocks I have been having with art and the projects I am working on and not feeling up to par with where I had hoped to be. So only way to get there is more drawing and practice!

@Leontine had asked me to share how I used textures in my winter challenge piece so I thought it would be best to create a separate topic.

I had actually learned about this technique from watching the SVS Video by @Will-Terry called Mixed Media

Since watching this course I have been gathering both my own textures (taking photo's of interesting textures with my iPhone while I am out in the world) and also using Google Images to find textures that I think might help me create the look I am going for. (Pro-Tip: After you type in the image you are looking for - example Glitter Texture, go to the "Search Tools option that will appear at the top of the results and click it. It will pull up options one of which is Size - and I recommend that you select larger than 2MP to help limit your search to higher quality images - the higher the better resolution you will get in your final image.)

For the Winter Challenge piece here are the textures I used.

Once I have my base shape created on a layer in Photoshop I will go to the menu File -> Place and select the texture you want to try. It will place this texture on a new layer in Photoshop and I always make sure it is right above the base layer I am going to apply it over.

You can then either CTRL click on the Layer Thumbnail for the base layer to select it and use that selection to apply a mask to the texture layer. Or I recently discovered this handy little trick - hold down the ALT and hover your cursor between the two layers. You will see a little icon appear that is a box with a drop down type arrow. Click your mouse (or tap your stylus) and the texture layer will now indent over the base layer and it will automatically mask to the layer beneath it. And if you should make changes to that base shape underneath it they both update. Unlike masks where you would have to adjust the mask manually. I love this trick! Oh and you can also move the texture around and you will see the impact it has within the shape of the layer below it, so you can find just the right part of the texture. (This came in handy with the glitter texture which has both fine up close detail and also out of focus pieces in the back - so I could move it around and get just the right part of it to appear, or resize it to fit the scale of the shape/object in the scene).

Below you will see the blue paper texture layer that I have ALT clicked on to apply to the evergreen tree.

Once I have the texture layer in place I will then change its layer type to usually either Multiply or Overlay depending on what looks best. As they each impact the look very differently and it depends on the source texture as well. And often times once I have that set I will adjust the opacity of the texture so get just the right amount for my liking.

Here below are some close ups of the image with notes on which texture(s) was used where. Note sometimes I apply more than one texture as in the case of the blue sky background.

Hope you find this helpful!
Rich

@Jake-Parker I really enjoyed this and I am definitely going to make this a part of my daily morning routine. It really does force you to let go of all the details and think about each drawing differently. Was really a lot of fun!

@lmrush Fantastic news Lisa! Congrats!!!

Mirka, this is great. I shared it with my local SCBWI Illustrators Network group as more and more of them are working in Procreate and I know they will find this helpful!

My thoughts are with WIll and his sons at this very difficult time. So very sorry to hear this news

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how great of a job Tanner Garlick is doing with the illustrations for each podcast episode. Each one is really fun!

@rcartwright Tried that on both the phone app and via playback on the laptop - it slows it down but there is so much compression/echo/reverb going on - it's makes it very hard for me to listen to.

@Jake-Parker - There is a problem with this episode as it is playing back at 2x speed with some digital compression sounds mixed in. I have played it via the Podcast app on my iPhone and also directly from the SVS website on my laptop. Same problem on both so the file has an issue.

@w-coats - Hi Will! Being that I am involved in setting up this contest - I am not going to voice my opinion on which of your two designs to submit. I will just say that I think you have done a great job with both of them and which ever you choose you can be really proud of your work!

Good luck!

Rich

@eric-castleman Great idea Eric!

Hi All - Wacom posted today that the Windows 10 April update resolved our issue. You can find the info on it here: https://www.wacom.com/en-us/support?linkId=51131044&guideTitle=Why-is-the-pen-scrolling-instead-of-drawing-or-selecting-everything-in-Windows%3F&guideId=c0fbe8d4-d7b5-41ec-93c8-368cf9dfe2d7

I just finished the update and turned Windows Ink options back on in my Wacom control panel. And all seems to be working fine in Photoshop for me!

@chip-valecek - I did the exact same thing - with Photoshop and had to go and redownload all of the Kyle brushes and install them again, and arrange them the way i like them. So I totally feel your pain with all the troubleshooting trying to figure this one out.