Our SVS Virtual Studio MARCH 🍀 2020 🐭😬

[Coley]

Thanks @TessaW I'm really happy with my last couple pet portraits. I'm really surprised how my focus on illustration is improving my oil painting! I think I was missing fundamentals before and now that I'm working on that it's helping me paint and solve painting problems more easily. Whew.

@burvantill that's cute

[braden H]

@chrisaakins MOUSE WAAAAAAAAR!

I get to keep the mice that are the size of ponies, how about that

@Heather-Boyd lol

@Coley They're not ALL murderous

[Neha Rawat]

A returning client of mine was planning to write and self publish a children’s book and commissioned me to illustrate it. The pay isn’t much but I still took it up as a good practice project. I definitely spent way too much time on it but I don’t regret it. I finally finished it earlier this month and submitted it.

This Is the last spread of the book from the rough sketch, to line art to final.

[Neha Rawat]

I’m also trying to get work with other Indian children’s book publishers. But most of them look for very typical Indian settings which I realised I don’t have many example of. So this month I’m planning to create some more art with that in mind. This is a rough example of it. It’s very common to see kids play badminton in whatever open space they can find without proper nets etc. I’m not sure if I’ll submit this to any publisher but I was just trying to get my mind working on common sights.

[Neha Rawat]

I do have a potential offer for illustrating a B&W chapter book. They’ve asked for the main character sketches before signing the contract (is that common with other publishers as well?)

I mailed them this based on their brief character descriptions and am awaiting a reply from them. Fingers crossed!

[burvantill]

@Neha-Rawat Gorgeous

[braden H]

Direct light study that also involves a whole bunch of other hard to paint things, lol

[Heather Boyd]

The second of four foxes (same fox slightly altered with a background addition):
Scanning results the same so I adjust it digitally with light, contrast and colour to have it look like the original. Also need to adjust getting it's head in the Instagram post frame not chopped off, poor little headless fox lols. Thanks,

[Katie Kordesh]

At the point where I am very frustrated with this thing and made a big ol dribble on it! Gonna keep on pushin though

[TessaW]

@Katie-Kordesh It's looking beautiful so far. You can do it! Keep going.

[Katie Kordesh]

@TessaW Thanks so much tessa! I really love your work

[Amanda Bancroft]

It's great to see so many mice in March! haha which reminds me I have not yet done mice for the new art "key" notebook I started last month. This month I've been working on filling it in. Since I work traditionally, this key helps me remember which medium and which color and the process I used to create results, so when I take artwork to finish, I don't have to remember, I just look things up in the key notebook. Does anyone else do this?

[demotlj]

@Heather-Boyd My sympathies on the scanning issues. I've tried so many things to get the colors/white balance on my watercolors right and have found that photographing it (even with just my iPhone) works better than scanning it. I usually photograph it several times during the day with natural light coming through the window because the color cast will be different at different times of day, and I have even waited for the sun to be overcast to get a better photo. (I live in a gloomy area so the wait is never long!) Even then, I have to adjust it, but it generally starts from a better place than a scan does. Hotpress paper also photographs better than coldpress because the texture of the cold press can cast shadows but painting on coldpress is easier so that's a balancing act too. All in all, it's the worst part of painting traditionally

[Heather Boyd]

@demotlj

Because I work in the basement and the area has no natural light the actual image come out bright in the scan. So I will concede and just continue to adjust for now. But on another upsetting issue my posting on Instagram is cutting the head or at least trimming this guy’s nose off. I believe it’s in part due to me painting really close to the edge. I tried to adjust by cropping in and did increase more of his nose but, I don’t like my images after all the work with frames cutting my critters head off. Any suggestions? Thanks,

[Jeremy Ross]

Proud to be part of this community!

Did this for my daughter.

[demotlj]

@Heather-Boyd Have you tried the setting on Instagram that you can click before posting that will shrink your picture a little to let it fit in Instagram's square frame? It looks sort of like a crop icon on the left hand part of the menu choices.

If that doesn't work, I use an app called "Square" that adds white space around my picture so that it will fit into Instagram.

[Gillian Howden]

Skywhale Sighting
I originally came up with the scuba diver for another piece, but his design was too busy and didn’t work well. Still, I really liked him overall and built this Illustration to give him a place in my portfolio.

[Heather Boyd]

@demotlj oh fantastic thank you, I tried crop for the first fox but it cropped it off none the less. I’ll try that app. Thank you thank you,

[Coreyartus]

Finished up the swamp image a couple days ago, based on the thumbnail I shared on the 2nd. Thought I'd complete the circle.

[burvantill]

@Heather-Boyd I use Snapseed to expand the borders of my photo when I have a wonky sized image. It’s free and I loooove it.

Like this.
Of course I now realize that you probably can’t see the difference since background it white. LOL
I do this only for IG because i think it reduces the image size.