Paul and His Beast

I am excited to share a wonderful middle grade chapter book, Paul and His Beast. Written by Sarah Stup, the book is about a sixth grader with autism who is working hard to be successful in a regular middle school.  It's a great story and gives the reader very thoughtful insight into what it's like to have autism.  

I was honored to create the cover and interior illustrations for the book.  The photo above shows the printed book and I'm including some of the interior illustrations below.

 

Sarah Stup is an author with autism.  To read more about Sarah, her writings, visit her website at sarahstup.com.  Paul and His Beast is available through the site as well.

More Inktober 2015: 8, 9, 10, 11

Here are the next four drawings for Inktober 2015:

He needed to be pointing at something!

Pen and ink on Canson illustration paper

Black ballpoint in a Baron Fig sketchbook

Higgins Super White ink on black illustration board

Inktober 2015, Drawing 7

Inktober 2015, drawing 7

I drew this with a crow quill nib (Hunt 102) and Higgins Eternal ink on Canson Illustration art paper.

Haunting a House

The address has been obscured.

This is a custom haunted house portrait that I recently completed.  A client sends me a couple of clear pictures of their house and I draw it in pen and ink as a whimsical, creepy-cute haunted house!  For this one, my customer wanted their address included in the art and their dog chasing a black cat.

This was an 8"x10" paper size to fit in a standard frame.  I used Strathmore watercolor paper, a crow quill pen (Hunt nib 102) and Higgins Black Magic ink.  Here are a few process shots:

First pencil rough on left, Photoshop edit on right

Retraced final sketch

Transferred to watercolor paper and ready for ink

Inking in progress, address obscured

I do these custom house portraits through my Etsy shop.  For now the listing there is for 4x6, but 5x7, 6x8 and 8x10 can be requested.  Below is another completed house, this one at 6"x8".

The ravens were my client's idea!

Bunnies

Happy New Year, everyone!

I'm looking forward to Spring more than ever this year.  And when I think of Spring (and Summer), I think of bunnies!  Oh, who am I kidding?  I'm always thinking of bunnies.

Bunnies are surprisingly hard to draw if you don't want to draw "real" bunnies but you don't want to draw cartoons, either.  I've been working on a way to draw bunnies I think are just right.  This set comes pretty close for me.  But aside from the style of bunny faces, the motivation for this set was that I really wanted to paint cute bunny outfits with watercolors.  :)

These are all drawn with crow quill pen (Hunt nib 102) and Higgins Black Magic ink.  The watercolors are a mix of Grumbacher and Winsor & Newton.  The paper is Strathmore.

These are all ACEOs (ACEO stands for "Art Cards, Editions and Originals"), so they measure 2.5" x 3.5".  They are available in my Etsy shop here.

2014 Halloween Art Collection

Hello!  I'm sorry my last post was so long ago.  I've been working on several things, one of which is my new shop on Etsy.  It's been more fun than I thought it would be and I find myself thinking constantly of work I might create to list there!

Starting at the end of August, I did a series of Halloween ACEOs.  That stands for Art Cards, Editions and Originals.  Anything goes in creating ACEOs as long as the size is 2.5" x 3.5".  My set was all done with pen and ink with some orange watercolor.  A few of these are still available in my Etsy shop.

Thanks for looking.  I appreciate your visit!

Illustration Friday: "Repeat"

"Come Along!"

I love using black watercolor wash on pen and ink drawings!  For this I used Higgins black India ink with Grumbacher Academy lamp black watercolor on Canson watercolor paper.  Canson is nice watercolor paper because it has just enough texture to be interesting and take an ink pen gently, but not so much that it overpowers the drawing in a photo or scan.

I added another view of the art because it's small and this photo shows the size well.  It's an ACEO.

New Work

Every week I hope that some of the work I've been doing for fun and creativity will fit with the Illustration Friday weekly theme, but lately nothing fits!  And I just keep doing whatever I want, so I haven't had anything to post for IF.  But I want to share what I've been doing!  So here's a collection of ACEOs and sketches that have come off my drawing table in the last few weeks.

"Little Red Heart", ACEO, ink and watercolor

"Blueberry Pie", ACEO, ink and watercolor

"Hello, Rabbit!", ACEO, ink and watercolor

"Marianne Dashwood", ACEO, colored ink

"After the Ball", a romantic sketch

"Moon and Sun", ballpoint drawing

Unplanned

This illustration was almost totally unplanned.  I was working on a commission this morning, and then suddenly I wasn't because I was working on this.

Often I want to say something in an illustration but (as I always complain to my husband) it's not a song or a poem where you can just say what you want to say.  It's an illustration so I have to try to communicate something with a visual image and I think lots of times that I just don't quite get there.

Today was different.  I wanted to communicate what it feels like to want to say something and to have something to say, but also how hard it can be to do that.  And how we must all have creativity and imagination and whatever inside ourselves but are a little reluctant to let anyone else see even though we want to.  Then this drawing started to happen and it was going well!  I didn't even want to bother with sketching so except for the little character, I didn't.  I wanted the whole thing to just be spontaneous.  So here it is.  I hope you like it!

Illustration Friday: "Hybrid"

Fog

                                          The fog comes

                                          on little cat feet.

                                          It sits looking

                                          over harbor and city

                                          on silent haunches

                                          and then moves on.

                                                                    -Carl Sandburg  

Illustration Friday: "Travel"

Drawn with brown ink on Arches cold-pressed watercolor paper.

Something I'm Working On

Greetings!  I hope everyone is having a good summer.  I'm happy to stay out of the heat and draw!  I can't show the commission I'm currently working on because it's a custom gift.  But I can share what I'm up to on the side.  I'm working on creating a style I like for drawing historical figures as characters rather than more formal-looking portraits.  These are Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, drawn from the influences of television series characters, descriptions in reading, and paintings of the Renaissance period.

More Fan Art

I admit I'm having way to much fun with this.  Sketching faces is so relaxing to me, I love historical stories, and "The Borgias" (Showtime) has given me never-ending reference!  This is Cesare Borgia, from my own screenshot from the pilot episode.  Graphite.

Illustration Friday: "Surveillance"

I'm a huge fan of the (sadly cancelled) Showtime original series "The Borgias".  It's like a really great historical fiction book come to life and is, well, eye candy in every way.  It makes me want to draw every character and facial expression, not to mention the beautiful lighting, scenes and costumes.

Since I've been dying to do that, I chose a scene that would fit this week's IF theme, took a screenshot on my desktop, and sketched from it!  This is Lucrezia Borgia as she stands on a curtained balcony above the hall where her suitors are being presented, observing them.  Holliday Grainger is the actress who brilliantly plays Lucrezia, and this scene can be found in Season 2, Episode 6.

I have not decided if I will push this further, or if I will go on to sketch more faces instead!

Illustration Friday: "Tension"

I wish I could spin some meaning into this, but in reality it was just about procrastinating, doing a fast sketch for fun and drawing thick lines with my brush pen!  It felt great.  When I realized it would work for Illustration Friday, it was a nice little bonus!

"Marielle"

"Marielle"

I named her after I drew her.  I don't know why but the name just seemed to fit.  She's a pencil sketch I did from my imagination last night while watching television.  I really like sketching while watching TV;  the TV keeps me from over-thinking!

Illustration Friday: "Egg"

A Few Doodles

Hi everyone!  I've been busy with life things and haven't been working on anything I thought was worth posting, but I have been doing little drawings in my sketchbook.  I wanted to check in here and say "hello", so I'll go ahead and post a few sketches.  These are all drawn quickly in ballpoint. I'm liking ballpoint more and more!  No smudging, no sharpening, no stopping to dip a pen!