Greencastle streetscape

Greencastle shops

Last month we drove through Greencastle, Indiana, on the  way to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for the EAA Airventure 2017.   On the way back we stopped to take pictures of its downtown.  I seem to have found another small town square with interesting storefronts.  Hooray! There will be several drawings possible from this town square so I will have work layed out for a bit.

I finished the dog portrait

Peiper

Silly me. In my eagerness to start the watercolors, I forgot to photograph the inked phase, so here is the finished portrait.  What a cute little dog this is.  After I started the watercolors, the overhead perspective from the photo made her harness start to look more and more like a neckerchief.  I had to widen the base somewhat to make it look right.  It wasn’t so apparent in the pencil up or even the inking, but about half way through the watercolors, the orange harness fabric started to bother me.  I widened the base with the ink.  Fortunately, that area is in shadow, so I could get away with it.  In the end, I am pleased with it.

A new dog portrait commission

Dog portrait

A dog commission came up recently while I was working on the little book, entailing a sudden change of gear.  I hadn’t done a commission pet piece since last year, so it was a nice surprise.  The client saw Gizmo the cat’s portrait posted on my instagram account and inquired about one for himself.  It’s a cute little dog, don’t you think?

Watercolored title page

The front and last pages (folded in the middle)

I watercolored what will be the front piece and end page.  I am debating going back and putting sky into most of the bigger landscapes.  Originally, I thought that I needed to leave the space white for the words, but upon reflection, the writing should be easily visible through the blue sky and I think the expanses maybe need some color.

Any opinions on that?

The cover piece

When setting up the other drawings for the book, I forgot all about the cover piece. So here is the pencil and ink up.  I wasn’t happy with the first drawing and ended up adding some vegetation to the foreground in the inking for more color.  I like it better, now.

Cover piece

Inked in cover piece

Watercolored

I have watercolored the book images in.  I was a little worried about the paper warping since it is just thicker mixed media paper, but it went pretty well.  I think the sheets will flatten nicely when squished into the scanner.  It is a fold in the middle book so these are really 2 facing pages each with writing on one.  I forgot about a title and end page, so that is left to do.

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

 

 

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Page 8

A New Project – Something I’ve Never Tried Before

This is something totally new for me.  My dear daughter-in-law asked me to draw a children’s book with her words for my grandson, about to be one year old.  It will be a square book  so these are two facing pages each.  I did a pencil up of each page and let her approve them.  Here is the penned version.  Watercolor goes over the ink.  So far, so good.

Page 8

Page 4

Page 7

Page 6

Page 2

Page 6

Page 1

Page 3