Our SVS Virtual Studio 🦇 OCTOBER 2019

[TessaW]

@MissMushy Your watercolor landscape looks great! I'm especially impressed that it's done from your head.

[MissMushy]

@TessaW aww thanks!

[evilrobot]

Some process testing

[Judy Elizabeth Wilson]

This is an illustration for my niece Georgia's 9th birthday today and the black cat is hers.
Georgia has cochlear implants and glasses which was important to be in the illustration. Georgia's mum says it would be a good idea to have more children with disabilities in children's books.

[evilrobot]

Some traditional inking practice

[Heather Boyd]

@evilrobot I like how his pinkie sticks out, I can tell he’s a tea drinking man. Lols

[MissMushy]

More watercolour therapy

[burvantill]

I’m plugging away on my inktober story but I will not be finished by the 31st because I caught a virus and was out of commission for 11 days. So I’m starting another # to go along with #inktober for all of us late comers that still want to finish our projects but life got in the way. I thought #inktardbutgettinitdoneber. But @kaitlinmakes made it shorter and better.
#inktard2019
Who’s with me?!

[TessaW]

@burvantill That sounds like a rough go! Looks like you're feeling better? Have you run out of ink on any of your pens yet?

[jwing]

painting from reference i did a little while ago! Wanted to do something autumn-themed lol :^)

[Coreyartus]

I've been very absent from the forums lately. I've been in the thick of costume designing three shows at the same time where I work, and the one I am the most proud of just closed last weekend. The second one opened last night, and the third is in a couple weeks.

I thought I'd share the costume renderings I did for the first project--they were for a show called How High the Moon, which was a semi-autobiographical folktale written by one of the actors and directed by his wife about their attempts to have a child. They abstracted their story and the child became a moon, the fertility clinic was run by a bear, the adoption agency by a raccoon... It was a quite lovely, intimate, and ultimately heartbreaking and uplifting story about striving for a dream that doesn't come true, and living with that loss. It was quite a special experience for everyone involved. There were projections and animation, puppets, and a live 3-piece band that played blues and bluegrass.

I had done "speculative renderings" for a proposed production of it a year ago (shown below) for some different actors. But this year we got to mount it as part of La Jolla Playhouse's "WOW (With Out Walls) Festival". Of course, changes were made (I'd originally conceptualized the animal costumes made out of newsprint and kraft paper to match the cardboard puppets, but they wouldn't have survived so we had to do something else).

It was done outdoors for an audience of 60-80 each night, under the stars, complete with the dripping wet condensation that comes with doing a show near the waterfront as the sun sets (oy). I built all the costumes, latch-hooking the bear's "fur" from the cast's donated t-shirts and the raccoon's "fur" from other non-knit pieces. I accidentally cut a hole in a dress I made which required me to "fix it" with ribbon embroidery flowers to cover it up (which meant, of course, that I had to embroider others all around the hem... Nightmare. Just a nightmare. I'd never done ribbon embroidery before. AAAAAAH! What one does for the love of a project, ya know?) I also built a 1950's "fish cape" with layers and layers of fish scales, a duck tail, and a sad little patchwork set of bunny ears.

I knew because of the confluence of these shows that I wouldn't be able to do much drawing in October (Inktober would be a bust for me), but I did manage to go to my first SCBWI meetings, where I was lit on fire with hope and inspiration and confidence-inspiring advice. I've already met some awesome fellow illustrators there, and we've had a couple "schmoozes" where we play games and do life drawing with a model.

It has been a full month! I only have one more show to mount, then I can concentrate on putting some drawing back in my life!! Woot!!

[Heather Boyd]

@jwing this is very well done!

[A Former User]

This post is deleted!

[burvantill]

@TessaW I had to replace the ink cartridge on my brush pen because I used it for our how to ink lessons. And my 01 micron is starting to die. Weirdly, all the hatching I’m doing isn’t running me out of ink with the microns as quickly as I thought it would.
I am feeling better, Thankyou.

[burvantill]

@jwing ️