I was inspired by Winnie the Pooh. Always walking in circles and wondering whose footprints he's seeing. =)x

Lisa Burvant, burvant illustration, @burvantill

The moment before...you lose all your shtuff.

I've been wanting to do something with a vintage postcard for a while and this seemed like a good fit. The family goes to the Oasis expecting an OASIS.

Thomas is too excited to be chasing a squirrel that he does not realize that it is literally right under his nose. =)x

I’ve been plugging away on an assignment for Visual Storytelling Techniques
Here’s where I’m at so far

Little did the children know as they walked home from the park that they would be enveloped by a spontaneous animal music parade and invited to join in. =)x
Thank you to all of my SVS friends that helped me with the important decisions.

Here’s a WIP of my bear. It’s finished and currently being placed in a postcard layout in Illustrator. I photoshopped the shadows across the whole postcard. I’ll share how I did that in another post because it was pretty sketchy but turned out just fine.

What's everyone working on right now? I'm pretending I am walking through a studio that we all share and looking over your shoulders at what you are working on. Post it! As in Grade school Show And Tell, NO CRITIQUES ARE ALLOWED HERE. Just walking through the studio keeping our mouths shut. We will allow a, that's cool or wow comment. Lol! You know, positive appreciation.

Personally I am all over the place. Summer is more difficult for me, because school is out. My solid schedule gets thrown in the wash with all of the swim towels. I have been drawing/sketching in my new Procreate app and I did start a small watercolor sketchbook while hiking.

I made a sketchbook goal at the beginning of this year, to fill up my entire sketchbook by the end of December. After I made this goal, I began my transition to digital art and stopped sketching as much in my physical sketchbook. A few weeks ago I decided that since I am still sketching, just in Procreate instead of traditionally, that I am going to print out my sketches and paste them in my sketchbook. I remember watching a @smceccarelli YT about her Scratchbook, where she talks about how she draws and pastes everything into this big beautifully ugly book and calls it a Scratchbook instead of a sketchbook. I loved the idea at the time and now I am putting it to practice. Thank you Simona for sharing. These are a few of the sketches I've done recently that I'm getting ready to print.

Before I talk about the next step in my book dummy process I would like to comment on the difference in my schedule from the last time I did this book dummy process. Last time I did not have a day job and I was able to spend huge chunks of time working on the project. This time, when I made my schedule, I didn't take into consideration that I now have a stinky part time job that does not define me what so ever, that is taking up my precious art time. It's a bummer, but life goes on. I have been altering my schedule along the way now, to make up for that lost time. If I base myself on the original schedule, then I am 10 days behind. It's a good thing I am not doing that or I may have become very discouraged.

Now back to the project. I have finished my emotions for my three girls. I decided not to do emotions for Dad and Mrs L as they will only show up on one, maybe two pages.
Here is Grace and Tee.

Next is the Thumbnails stage, which I will start tomorrow. This evening I created an InDesign document with my page layout according to the following guideline,

with the paginated text. Then I printed out several copies of the document laid out in spreads, 10 up. So each page is about 1.5 x 2 inches.

I will sketch out my thumbnails in pencil on these, then in the next step which is called Loose Drawings, I will sketch out larger versions on my ipad. I intend to create a spread layout with bleed in procreate which I will use for my final sketches, so I may just use that initially for my loose sketches and clean them up for the finals.

I am curious how you all set up your thumbnails for a book project? Do you do them systematically or draw what ever feels right at the moment? Or what? Share, please, I love to hear about other peeps processes.

@Gary-Wilkinson

I recommend the How to Discover Your Style SVS class. It's a good start to figuring out where you want to go with your art. There is a dream portfolio assignment that is perfect for this question.

This sounds familiar. I think the SVS Holy Trinity has touched on this topic in the past. What I get from it is, that it takes a lifetime to become a master at something and to just keep churning out your art, that you will get there. Keep a positive outlook on this project so you don't get burned out and know that even if you slow down, that every little bit you do will get you one step closer to your goal(s). I say goal(s) because it seems as soon as we artists get to what we think of as our goal, we immediately see a new one on the horizon. Good luck. =)x

@chrisaakins LOL! I didn't get it at first, but that's puny.

@Heather-Boyd I think Chip moved it to it’s own category. He may still be working on it.

@chrisaakins

I like the color palette. I think you could push the light and shadow a bit more. Maybe open up the dark feathers on the birds back with some reflected light.

She lives!
I love her angry face.