Exploration!

After a long break I finally felt the strong urge to draw pull me back to my computer, where hours flew past without my even noticing. It was amazing, and felt so good to illustrate simply because I wanted to again. This is the product of locking myself in my room for hours on end when I have the desire to just keep working on art. It is an original character of mine that I have not drawn in a few years. Done completely in Photoshop CS4 with a tablet.


Whenever I illustrate my original characters they tend to come out in a much more detailed, cell-shaded style that strays quite far from my children's book or editorial style...so this time I decided to make an attempt to combine them- depict my character in my children's book style...and I would say it strongly resembles it, yet there are quite a number of ways that it varies as well. However, I am happy with the result!

And before anyone asks, yes he is a goth. His name is Zairin. He was conjured in my mind during an interesting period in my life, but he really is quite nice at heart. Previously I did not see myself illustrating tween/teen novels, but I could see this in some of those novels I see on the shelves today.

Any thoughts? Please share them! I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!

Until next time!

Time for an update!

Well, now that school is out job searching has become my full time job. However, in addition to that I have been asked to illustrate a children's book! I have been developing the characters and am now starting to play with fonts for the cover design for my client.

I do not want to give away too much information about the book, as it is not under my copyright, but I will say that it is about a boy who wants a teddy bear and how he goes about getting one. The boy is what I assume will be the main character drawn, along with a few other people and finally the bear. Currently I am still uncertain about whether the finished works will be done digitally or with dip pen and ink with watercolor, but I am working on the sketches digitally.

Below are a few examples of different layouts with three possible fonts for the cover. The three fonts I use are Garmond, Myriad Pro, and Optima. My favorites (Baskerville, Gill Sans, Helvetica, Didot, Cochin, ect.) just didn't work with the illustrations or feel of the book.





I'm sure to some these all look the same, and for that I apologize, but there are differences! I am playing with the size of the text versus the illustration, the type, as well as the placement of the title and author/illustrator names.

Anyway, I just felt like an update was necessary, and thus you have this. Hopefully there will be more soon once we have decided how the text will be dispersed over the 24 pages- then I can begin working on thumbnails for the double page spreads!

Best wishes to all of my followers, and enjoy! Until next time!
~Liz