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

Gizmo done

Gizmo

I finished Gizmo’s watercolor portrait, and I must say, I like it much better than the acrylic one.  I was able to be much more delicate in depicting him – and he was a very delicate little guy.  I think for portraiture (both pet and architectural) that pen and ink with the watercolor or pastel overlay is much more suited to my style.  I really need to take an acrylic class and get a better idea of technique.

Redoing Gizmo’s portrait

Pencil up

I wasn’t ever really happy with the acrylic portrait of Gizmo the cat, so I decided to try it again with the pen and watercolors.  Here are the pencil drawing and the inked sketch.

So far, I am pleased.  I feel I have so much more control with the pen and watercolors.  Maybe it is the lazy way out, but I haven’t done a pet portrait since the two of my friend’s horses last summer and I wanted to try something again.  I’ll wait to finish the inking if I need to until after the watercolors.  I don’t want it to get too dark as he was a lighter orange tabby.

Inked

Jasper Watercolors

Watercolored

I finished the watercolors for this Jasper streetscape.  The storefronts in this rural Indiana town are to die for.  You don’t see architecture like this being built anymore and I love to find it thriving here.

I enjoyed all of the patterned brickwork on the second story, although it was not the easiest thing in the world to paint.  It’s amazing how my eye (and hand) kept jumping around when all I wanted to do was alternate the colors in a small area.  I made a couple of mistakes, but fortunately I could easily fix them as I progressed.  All of the layers helped too.  This is the last interesting shop front in this town square, so I will have to be looking around for a new one.  I need some inspiration.

Almost inked storefront

Inked shop front

The inking has almost been finished on the Jasper store front.  I just have the signage and the left background to do.  I am looking forward to using the watercolors on this one.  It has red brick with white brick patterned in across the top and under the windows.  Once again, the trim will be a light green and yellow but a band of painted brick also carries across the top.  I wonder if the shops here got together and coordinated the color schemes.

All of these details will be harder to paint, but it will make this shop streetscape unique.  Once it’s done, it will go into my etsy store.  Two of my Jasper drawings have been sold, so it appears that some townspeople appreciate their lovely town square as much as I do.

Another Jasper streetscape

Another Jasper storefront

I looked at the date of my last post and couldn’t believe it has been a month since then.  Such was my May.  We had one out of town family move and another period helping an elder family member start the process to downsize and move into a more assisted living situation.  I think I spent about as much time out of town as in.

But now I’m back to the drawing table with an old standard.  I really love this small town main square.  Jasper has one of the most colorful downdowns I have seen in Indiana and I love depicting all of the colors of the buildings.  Here is the pencil up of another red brick/green trim shop.  Let the inking begin.

 

The three amigos

The three amigos

The three calves painting is now finished and I am fairly happy. I think the one thing I might change is to have made the whole thing somewhat larger. In hindsight, trying to cram all of these guys into a 6×7 frame made it more difficult than perhaps was necessary.  I had a harder time inking with the thicker nib pen and there wasn’t as much room to layer the defining colors.  Lesson learned. Give each animal room enough for its own space.