Illustration Friday - Shades

Raven

Working on some character ideas and sketches for one of my children's books. This one is all birds, and the main antagonist/protagonist is a Raven. I am hoping to illustrate it with a Northwest Coast Native Art feel, since it suits the story so well. I spent a good deal of time doing research on the style, and while I am following it somewhat - I aslo want to break it up and do a bit of a mash up with my own style. Not sure how it will all pull together when I am done, but I am leaning to a more realistic looking Raven with little touches of Northwest Coast symbols.

The Dance Macabre

The cover art for a poem in graphic format.  I will be publishing Act One very soon. Stay tuned!

Paris Ballad - The High Priestess (Chapter 2)

I haven't known what to do with myself. Since I have finished the first chapter and sent it off, part of me was reluctant to continue on with the project, since I may need to change things. And yet, my heart wants to work on this. I tried working on an old WIP that I put away for a bit...and then for some reason (fate?) the part that I had just added, completely vanished. The Word doc closed of it's own accord, without even asking me to save it. I took it as a sign. My heart wasn't in that story at the moment. It was in this one still. So, I am hoping that is a sign of good things to come for this project...like publication.  I began working in earnest on Chapter 2 - The High Priestess. Here is the cover for it.

Paris Ballad

I finished the first chapter/episode of Paris Ballad - a graphic novel about the triumph of love over adversity and the occult. Here is the cover. If you go to the illustration section and look for the subheading 'graphic novel' you will find more (and larger) images from this book. I am excited about sending it out. I feel really proud of the work that I have done, and am really pleased with the cover. I hope you like it and I welcome your comments. I am currently looking for a publisher and/or agent for this. I expect it will appeal to the same people that enjoyed Craig Thompson's Blankets.  And I hope that men will enjoy it too. As the story progresses, there will be more thriller elements involved. I have uploaded only a small sample of this episode, which is 36 pages in total.

My Current WIP - A graphic novel.

I don't want to talk too much about this project just yet - but am working hard on my new graphic novel set in Paris. It is strictly for adults. There is quite a bit of mature content in this story. I am loving how it is turning out. I have about 60 pages roughed (the first 3 chapters) and am working on creating some final pages so that I can start to submit it shortly for development. I might use kickstarter to help me fund it, in which case, I think I might offer 'advertising' in the book in subtle ways...like I could put your image in a crowd scene, name a cafe after you, put up a graffiti tag with your name, or for big bucks...maybe an advertisement on a kiosk for your business. All possible options for funding rewards. Here, in the meantime are some sample pages of what my book is going to look like. It will all be in grayscale (like a silent movie)

Illustration Friday - Contraption

Why, it is all just a house of cards!

I was inspired today to do an illustration for this week's Illustration Friday theme - Contraption. I immediately thought of a Rube Goldberg contraption which once I had the dominoes leading to a house of cards...became a sort of Alice in Wonderland/political illustration - with the cheshire cat becoming a wall street fat cat and the house of cards and dominoes the illusion/contraptions of wall street. Alice wakes up when she realizes it is all a house of cards.

The Diabolical Circus - The Beast

Some of my work, especially Liz & Pip has a political quality to it. Liz & Pip is a parable about Greed vs. Sharing. This is obviously very topical at the moment. To support the Occupy Wall Street movement that is going on to fight the Plutonomy and to comment on the issues - I began creating this 'circus poster' that describes some of what is REALLY going on. There will likely be more to come. Feel free to use this in a blog post, or editorial. Any further use, please contact me. I plan to make available these as printable posters - possibly for purchase. (I need to pay my bills too but I feel it is important to share this at least for free on the internet.) Feel free to share it with your friends as well. +1 it if you like it, and credit it to littlejolit.com if you use it. Thanks so much. I hope you like it.

Making a Picture - My Process

I am going back a bit to my old style of illustrating from when I was in fashion. I am bringing that look - to children's books, and well all of my illustration work, I think. I think I am really finding my confidence and voice again, which is more painterly than I had been going for since I began working digitally. But I am really pleased, and find it so much easier to paint this way. It kind of boggles my mind that I hadn't worked like this before, but I think it has something to do with finding the right tool in my software program for creating the soft outline that I like, and the translucent paint look. It is one tool that does it all, which is kind of amazing.

Today, while drawing this piece below, I met a young girl named Mia at the Starbucks who took an interest in my work and wanted to know how I did it. So, I thought I'd share with you, what I shared with her. This was completely drawn from beginning to end using Manga Studio on an HP Touchsmart TM 2050 Tablet Computer, in about 5 hours.

The first image is my rough sketch which actually is a combination of 2 rough sketches, background and foreground, that I merged together. The basic layout and some loose detail is seen.

Once I have the rough layout that I like, and more or less the expression that I am looking for, I am ready to trace over this on another layer, making my lines as soft and as clean as possible.  I much prefer this softer line, than the harder ink line I had been using before. I had always used pencils and pencil crayons for my lines pre-digital days. This has the same look. (Some areas were erased for the final compilation, and some areas were mistakenly coloured, I forget to switch layers sometimes :-P

 The next image is the painting/color layer. I don't really know what to say. I just start coloring. I use the pencil tool and play with it's natural transparency getting a layered coloring effect.

I then begin adding shading in various hues. 1st layer of light shading

 Then the 2nd, darker layer of shading more uniform in hue just to get it to pop a bit more, brings it to the final painting below.

If kids wore couture

Some silliness that combines my former career as a fashion designer (I studied haute-couture in Paris) and my new love - children's illustration. Featured today are kids in Mark Jacobs and Louis Vuitton's Fall 2011 collection.