Make: Illustration Update

May 2023 Blog Post

Hello!

You might remember that I used to share my illustration work on instagram. I posted there kind of regularly for about five whole years! There were some parts I really liked about showing up there, and in general, it was a motivating practice for me that helped me to figure out what I value and care about when it comes to art and illustration, not to mention the inspiration and art connections I still make there now. But, posting there also has a lot of downsides, and for me, right now, they outweigh the benefits. Maybe I’ll start posting there again one day, but not anytime soon.

That being said, I do miss sharing my illustration! I regularly update my portfolio, so you can always check there if you’re missing me, but I thought it would be nice to send a little update right to ya!

I started an illustration sprint in late February after a long break, so let’s walk down the aisle to consider some of the pieces I’ve made in the past two months!

This was the first piece I made on the first day I sat down to draw! There’s always something so beautifully fresh about starting again after a long break, and I felt that through this whole process. It’s a large sketchbook painting (10.5’’ x 16.5’’) in gouache and colored pencil.

The next day, I drew this guy. I started off the sprint with a draw everyday intention for about 4 weeks. I really wanted to regain familiarity with my materials and feel comfortable sitting down to draw. I love this drawing quite a lot. Drawn in a mixed media sketchbook: gouache, colored pencil, marker.

I spent some time drawing animals, and was really loving working with colored pencils. First a cat ^, then some birds:

Brush pen (top) and then colored pencil (bottom).

I started to move on to some larger projects after I finished the draw everyday.

First, a certificate for my book club, drawn completely in colored pencil (excepting the text), of each book we read that year!

Then, I started to work on my current picture book project. Book projects are notoriously secretive things. For the most part, everything that goes into them has to stay secret until the book becomes a real thing. But, I’m going to share a few pages with you! First, I did some work that was just subject-matter adjacent, but not actually a part of the book.

I was (and am) doing a lot of experimentation with rendering to figure out how the blend of colored pencils and gouache that is working for me. In this piece, I love the transparency and detail that the blend of both achieved in the background, but it’s too stark a difference from the bold, primarily gouache way that I like to represent characters.

So, I switched over to a simpler piece of a tent that I’ve had sketched out for years! I had never actually rendered it, so I went in to practice the boldness of the gouache with the texture of the colored pencil.

Then I decided to dive deeper: a much more complicated scene with lots of characters, but still a white background. I am so proud of this sketch. In the past, I’ve struggled with how to move from my rough sketches to my more full ones (like this one), and then again with how to move the full sketch to the painting paper. But, this time, I rough sketched with an under pencil (pink), and came in with graphite on top. I had tried this method in the past, but found it to be overwhelming, with too much line. Not sure why, but it clicked this time!

This is maybe my favorite thing I’ve ever painted! It represents so much of what I’ve been looking for for this book. I did use a projector to transfer the image to painting paper, but for the next page…

I drew the sketch directly onto painting paper! It was a little nerve-wracking, but totally worth it so far. It’s drawn with green colored pencil and recolored here for visibility’s sake.

I think this little dude might be one of the cutest characters I’ve ever sketched up! Wish me luck as I paint him in this big (9’’ x 18’’) wild forest scene over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for making it this far! Hope you get to see this work in a real book one day 👀