Our SVS Virtual Studio OCTOBER 2🎃2🎃

[Jacy13]

Here are a few of my inktober pieces I've finished up this month! It's part of a series I'm working on called "Funky Frogs", haha Some of these are just loosely based on the prompts.

Bulky frog:

Wisp frog:

Radio frog:

[braden H]

Workin' on the environments of some book interiors. My process is now paint the background and environment, THEN doodle the characters

[jdubz]

@Braden-Hallett Interesting - you completely polish the background before you add anyone else to the scene? Is that more so that you can more accurately use the light and shadow of the environment on the characters??

[braden H]

@jdubz yup! It's because I have the bad habit of doing exactly the opposite (finishing and polishing the characters first) which means I need to fix the environment to match the characters instead of just rendering the characters to match the surroundings.

[jdubz]

@Braden-Hallett Very cool! I'm currently trying to break the habit of over finishing characters too early so I can attest to that pain

[Coreyartus]

The local San Diego chapter of SCBWI hosts a once-a-month "Illustrator Shmooze" where we all draw together and socialize and get to know each other. Lately everything has been happening on Zoom, of course, so we've had fun watching life drawing videos from YouTube together and trying our hand at some prompts. We used the Inktober prompt list to play with a couple. After an hour of life drawing (argh, that was painful!!) we did: "A Character and Floating" as one 5-minute prompt, and then "Slippery and Disgusting" as the second 5-minute prompt which became 6-minutes because it was hard to finish... Haha!! We shared and laughed and it was a good time.

[VeronicaMui]

I just wanted to share another one because I’m super excited about this! I’ve been working on discovering a process I love that consistency produces results I like. I’ve been deep diving into this for all of 2020 and usually I’m just slugging through making a bunch of trash BUT I every so often, I’ve been getting little breakthroughs that inform me, and today I feel like I got one of those! I made the image on the top right a week ago sort of by accident. I printed the background first and just wiped an area clean to draw the girl in and misjudged her height by quite a lot!! But I crammed her into that space anyway, and just really liked the result.. But I didn’t love how she had no color.. So next I tried the version under that one. I actually did about 5 prints before I got to this one which I liked somewhat, but the dress wasn’t doing it for me still. Today, I tried modifying a sketch I made yesterday to print. The sketch I did had pretty accurate proportions, but I wanted to try to replicate the short smashed proportions I had done last week by accident so I shortened her arm and dress by a fourth, and smashed her legs from above knee height to partial calf and enlarged her head. I tried giving color to her as well...And I feel like I nailed it! I’m just really happy with it. I ended up asking my three kids their thoughts also ( I do sometimes, but never with this much intention) after listening to an SVS ( I think it was? ) talk mentioning how in children’s illustration, adults might be the gatekeepers, but KIDS are your actual audience, and wrote their likes and dislikes under the image. They all had an opinion and made really good points! I’m excited to see if I can continue making consistent results in this way!

[burvantill]

@Braden-Hallett i realized today that I don’t have to wait until Christmas for an easel to relieve my neck pain when drawing. I’ve had an easel in my art room for 30 years!!

[braden H]

@burvantill said in Our SVS Virtual Studio OCTOBER 22:

@Braden-Hallett i realized today that I don’t have to wait until Christmas for an easel to relieve my neck pain when drawing. I’ve had an easel in my art room for 30 years!!

Nice! Can't hurt, might help! Though your arm may get tired of the new drawing position for the first little while

[burvantill]

@Braden-Hallett said in Our SVS Virtual Studio OCTOBER 22:

Though your arm may get tired of the new drawing position for the first little while

Nope. All good. I use the big easel from time to time for large format loose sketching, which is why it’s so ridiculous that it didn’t occur to me to put the iPad on it. FACE PALM!

[ajillustrates]

Had to take a break from Inktober to sketch a zombie.

[djlambson]

I've been doing little snowmen scenes! Two different skies on the first. I had used a portion of a watercolor painting layered underneath of the darker toned one but it's not working I don't think. So changed it out ..I'm still using a layer of traditional medium for the sky portion, but I think it's more 'opened up' and I kind of prefer it.

and this one:

[burvantill]

These are my entries for the SCBWI Narrative Art Awards contest. I wasn’t going to enter this year because I am working on a personal project and I was very conflicted. When I saw some other artists entries it got me excited to do it anyway. Unfortunately a lot of time had passed and I only had a couple weeks left to get my entries in. I made the deadline but it was too close and not enjoyable worrying about not finishing in time while trying to make something good enough to compete with. I don’t recommend it.

[Gary Wilkinson]

Trying to do something a little different without losing too much of my style.

[Elliot]

@Gary-Wilkinson This looks awesome!

[Gary Wilkinson]

@Elliot thank you! There is more that I would like to explore with this style and would like to test it out on a mini book project

[deborah Haagenson]

My focus in addition to Inktober this month is Character Design. I am working on a killer clown character that I had hoped to use in the SVS contest this month, but time has gotten away from me, so I won't be participating in that this month. This character is also being done for an outside of SVS class I'm taking. My character will be in an orange jump suit. My ref for shoes is on the 1st sheet. I took a photo of my own hands, drowning a plaster bust of Ceasar. My character was going to be drowning someone bobbing for apples.

[ajillustrates]

I didn't work on these this month (actually finished this project in February), but these two t-shirt/poster designs/illustrations were FINALLY released today!

[ajillustrates]

Things have finally calmed down at work long enough for me to return to the animal friends series of posters that's been hanging around since last year. It's a huge relief to start getting these proofs out again.

[Heather Boyd]

Hi so I wanted to share one of the things that helped me create this months contest entry. The others were making thumbnails of my characters and colour studies.

I do have a question and didn't want to make my own thread for this; I want to share this process (will post image below) of how I went about working on a master study on Instagram. I emailed the illustrator to ask permission because I would be reposting one of her works and giving credit to her; just showing my "process" and am still awaiting a reply. I thought I'd wait a month and then if no reply post on Instagram anyways because she may be too busy to answer. I would prefer of course her to say one way or the other. Or of she doesn't message me back should I just avoid an issue and not post this because I did ask for her permission and don't want to go back on it. I don't normally post master studies of other artist's work on my Instagram. Is this something that's acceptable? I know we post them on here. Anyways let me know or pm me so I don't take up too much of this thread with a discussion. Thanks,