Oops, the unfinished piece...haven.jpg

Well, due to sick kids I had an unrealized (or at least unfinished) piece this month. There's always April, right? Good luck to all who were able to enter this month.

he's beautiful!! I see nothing wrong with SVS on the flag, and we pretty much have show and tell every day!

It seems us traditional illustrators are few and far between at svs. I wonder if we could create a forum for those of us who haven't bit the bullet on digital yet to share tips and techniques for our processes. And maybe, as some of us who are interested in learning to use computers to reposition or make some clean up or corrections on our originals we could support each other in that 🙂 Anyone else interested in that idea?

Hi Ren,

Have you taken Will and Jake's children's book class? They have all sorts of info in there.

Some easy recommendations:

Join SCBWI before doing anything else: www.scbwi.com Watch Will and Jake's children's book class Go to a few SCBWi conferences to get a feel for it. look to your local college to see if they offer a night or weekend class on book illustration. These classes are typically cheap don't require you to be enrolled in the actual degree program. (note: in this industry no certification is needed at any point). Adjust your path as needed.

As a beginner, be prepared for this transition to take between 3-6 years to get into the industry. It will take at least a couple of years just in training the art skills no matter which route you go (online, brick and mortar, etc.).

Good luck!

Lee

Hi NoWayMe!

I really like what you did with the colors and the light! I think that it is truly a good idea to go with warm colors and play with the contrasts!
For the flowers, I did not really know if I really liked the at the first place but your Idea to put more will maybe do it... I will probably try that too!!!

Thanks a lot for all your suggestions! I will probably come back with some changes soon!

@Odré Thank you! I hope so!

Oh wow. Print Ninja looks great! I haven't been able to find good graphic novel printing before! Thanks so much Lee! 😃

Haha, you can see on my website that the text I added was, "Here I come!", so that was pretty much the emotion I was going for. I'm glad that came across!

Yea I am defiantly finding i'm getting more expression with the more realistic eyes. I don't find them that creepy but I see how people could see them as round black voids of utter nothingness, wow now i'm freaking myself out. HaHa!
Others find them adorable and for things like logos and symbols they work great.
Thanks for replying @Ace Connell.

@Will-Terry sounds like a good one, I'll be looking for that one.

Here is a WIP on a toon I'm doingcowboyhead.jpg

@Charlie-Eve-Ryan. Thank you very much for your input. Off to work I go!

Does anybody know how to create the PDF so that the scroll bar is at the bottom rather than the side?

In other words, I was hoping to make it more like a book experience (in terms of turning pages).

I don't have the paid version of Adobe but I do have Photoshop/Bridge (I'm using Bridge to put all my images into one PDF--hey I actually found something that Bridge is good for!).

Maybe I could just make all 24 pages on one super long PS document and put that into a PDF? Maybe that way it would read it as one long page and put the scroll bar at the bottom---or is there a better way to do it?

I'd like to NOT have to buy a year subscription of Adobe if possible.

@Lee-White I'll look into that next time for sure!

@Katrina-Fowler Sweet! I didn't sign up for anything special this time... But I plan to next time!

@Kevin-Longueil You are right, the upper arm looks a wee bit out of place, and not quite thick enough to match the arm in the foreground. You could thicken it a bit which may solve both problems. I think if you pulled some of the blue or green from the landscape for the leash it would work well, keeping it in the palette 🙂

Great work these are beautiful. Love your style.

Can't go (wrong end of the country 😉 but I'd like to wish you luck. I loved the conference in New York and wish I could make it out to the LA conference as well--the portfolio mentorship program looks awesome! Conferences are great for getting inspired and making connections.

I like the feeling it's giving right now. I think not knowing what she brought gives me the chance to participate in the story.

@Charlie-Eve-Ryan Thank you!