Japanese Iris Fairy - WIP

Here is the final piece. This piece was a lot harder than I thought for some reason. After working on it many times over, I thought it was time to let go and move on. Somehow, I still like how it turned out.
Above is the updated version of the fairy. Still a lot of work to do to get this piece to look the way I want to and balance the colors better.
Here is my work-in-progress of the Japanese Iris fairy I started last week. This is my second watercolor on a series of fairies that I hope to paint in watercolors. The fairies I want to paint are all inspired after flowers I like. Enjoy!
Working on a sketch for my next watercolor. This is the second on a series of flower fairies that I am trying to do for my watercolor class. This one was inspired by the Japanese Iris flower.

Playing with Balloons - My second 4WC illo

Here is one of my finished illustration for the 4 week challenge.

Atmosphere - my illo for this week's Illustration Friday

All my friends looked through the lens of the giant enchanted telescope and saw themselves floating in a rather bubbly atmosphere.

Playing with Dragons - My third sketch for the 4WC

This is my 3rd sketch for the 4WC. I chose to do all my sketches, for the challenge, first and color them all afterwards. As part of the challenge, we were also instructed to create a mock up of our piece as if it was a page on a children's book. I showed here what that page would look like but the illustration still needs to be colored. Enjoy!

Stargazing - My illo for this week's illustration Friday

Squeekie, the cat, decided to go stargazing. Little did he know he would be hypnotized by the beauty of the stars. Silly kitty!

Caged - My Illo for this week's Illustration Friday

This baby elephant wondered around and found an interesting toy. He is now totally stuck inside it. Can someone help him get out of the mess he is in?

My Creative Corner

I thought I would share my working space with everyone and give you a tour of the place where I spend a great deal of my time creating. Starting from the left, you can see my very, very old component stereo which still produces unbelievable sound. I still have the tape deck and the CD player...lol...but I also have all the cables to plug in my ipod. I can also walk over to my computer and listen to podcasts and songs from itunes.

I have a map of middle earth on the wall (I am a fanatic of Lord of the Rings). I have two tables that I dedicate to my sculpting and a drafting table for my illustrations. I bought a big white board for $35 at the wood store, cut it in 3 pieces, finished the edges and it all resulted in the three tables you see in the picture. The tables' legs I bought separately at the IKEA store and the one for the drafting table I ordered on-line. My tables can be pulled apart easily if I move one day. I also like to keep sketches on the left walls, as reference, while I am sculpting.

In the middle section of the room, I have my books (I want more) which are heavily guarded by some of the trolls and little toys and statues from Lord of the Rings (yes, I am a fanatic). I also hang from the ceiling long strings and put binder clips at the ends so that they can hold some of the sketches, illos or whatever I am working on at the time. These are usually awaiting filing, matting, scanning, framing, etc. My illustration friday submissions are usually hanging from these.

To the right, I have two glass display cases. I put my most precious sculptures there and I display some at local shows. Above my drafting table, I have some of my acrylic paintings for which I have received some sort of local award. I have a main computer, a laptop, a tablet a printer and a scanner. All the toys we, artists, love. My main computer screen is also large enough to allow me to sometimes watch TV as I work (mostly catch the news).

I am a very organized person and I find it hard to start a project unless my surroundings are clean and organized yet there is something odd about how I work and that is why this room's setup works so perfectly for me. I tend to swing back and forth between illustration and sculpting. When I get stuck in one, I go over to the other. In this case I just walk from one side of the room to the other. It is not uncommon for me to have multiple projects going. I have been doing that for years. I guess it is how I work best.

I hope you enjoyed this short tour of my space.

The Race - A Retelling (My process)

As part of the Art Intensive workshop offered by our regional SCBWI, we have to create a finished picture book illustration by going through a rushed version of the basic process an illustrator and art director would go through when creating art for a book to be published. The process is divided in four stages. 1) Create character studies 2) Create a sketch of the scene I've selected 3)Incorporate comments made by the art director 4) Create the final piece. We were given a short manuscript of the retelling of an existing story, better known as 'The Tortoise and the Hare'. I picked the scene where the character does some stunts to please the crowd.

A bunny is something that I haven't really drawn before so I had to try different ones first to see which one felt better. I ended up picking the first one from this study.


After choosing the character I liked, I started doing more character development sketches. I then selected the ones I thought I could use for the final sketch composition. I added more detail to the character and brought the images to Photoshop. I placed each bunny in a different layer. By having them in different layers, I was able to move them around and change their sizes as necessary. I also added the text to the composition as we were instructed. I forgot to mention that for this particular assignment, I decided to ink the character prior to bringing it to photoshop. This is something that I don't usually do but I guess in this case I was into it and I loved how crisp the drawings looked. I am not usually good at loose sketches. I guess this shows my style well.
Once I created the document in Photoshop and placed the characters in a way I thought I wanted them, I proceeded to work on the background.


To create the background, I used a piece of tracing paper and placed it on top of the composition and then started inking the background (hopefully you can see it well in this image). I proceeded to create a background for the full spread. These backgrounds (back and front) were then scanned and placed in different layers. Basically everything on this composition is in separate layers in photoshop.
For this final piece, I made sure everything was to specifications and I added the crop marks and center fold line and saved the file and submitted for review. We'll see what happens now. I will not hear until August 25th.

Trumpet Flower Fairy

I finished my first watercolor piece and I have to say that I sooo love watercolors. I can't wait to start working on my next piece. This time I'll try to play with cooler colors. I have a great teacher, his name is Carlos Alvarez Cotero and he does beautiful work in various mediums http://artcotera.homestead.com/. He teaches at the Mint Hill Arts where I sometimes volunteer. Thank you Carlos for introducing me to this medium and thanks for the wine too!