It's Not Easy Being Green

Here is the first of a series of pieces that I am doing as a warm-up for my book.

I can draw!

My studio space.  The white rectangles are pages of the final dummy book to be filled.  Eight now contain drawings.

Every so often I seem to forget and then rediscover that I can, in fact, draw.  This time, wow, it's crashing back on me in a glorious tsunami!

Taking the time to work out dragon anatomy and character faces has paid off tenfold.  Need another dragon in the background to round out the composition?  Move the main figure over a half inch?  No problem!  Did you know that dragons have a thumb on their wing?  It's usually tucked underneath.  Or that they have belly buttons?  Shhh, they're mammals, but don't spoil it for the kids.  (But don't ask me where the dragon nipples got off to.)

With that hurdle out of the way, I faced another problem: a reoccurring location is a page-filling heap of trash.  It is practically a character.  And try as I might, I can't seem to fake it.  I'm just not good at doodling some shapes around the edge that suggest that the entire space is filled with objects.  No, when I get going, I obsessively render every water bottle and broken cell phone.  And I'll have to redraw this heap at least five times.

But you know what?  Drawing a million pieces of trash is insanely fun!  And also, I'm getting faster and faster at it.  The first pile was excruciating, and had to be plotted out carefully in pencil first.  By the third one, I was flying by the seat of my pants, going straight at the blank sheet with pen.

Chris paid me an amazing complement when he went over to ooooh at the big trash heap, frowned, and then asked, "this isn't the original, is it?"  He asked because it was copy paper, with push pins shoved through the corners and a few dabs of white out.  Well, it's only a working sketch!  Drawn in cough sharpie cough.

As a reward to myself for getting such a reaction from Chris (who is, after all, a former art director)  I went shopping online for archival watercolor paper.

The Stuff I Took to Encore

Across from the sign-in table at Encore was a table of books for sale, by the people giving presentations.  And uh-oh.  All of them were novels.  I stood there with my heart in my stomach wondering how I could have so thoroughly misread the event info.  YA novels are awesome, and I would like to write some myself eventually, but right now my focus is on picture books.  And I'm the dweeb who shows up to a convention of novelists with a portfolio full of picture book art.

So I asked myself "What would Castle do?"  I marched (slunk) in, walked proudly (circled warily) to an empty seat, and laughingly introduced myself as the only dork in the room who was working on a picture book.  And I was immediately informed by some very nice folks that I wasn't alone, and in fact there was another picture book writer there at our table.

I can't say that I did a great job of working the room there at Encore, but thanks to the wonderful woman who made me feel so at home there at that first table, I came out of my shell enough to have a dozen good conversations.  For my first-ever convention, I think I did pretty well.

My big honkin' portfolio thing made me feel very conspicuous at first; but after showing it off a bit, I flipped to feeling like I really had my act together in the stuff department.  This is what I brought along:

Instead of going with the standard plastic artist's book, I used a scrap book.  It was, surprisingly, more professional looking.  Also, cheaper.  A bit heavy, though.

Inside: pockets with samples of the development art for my manuscript, and the manuscript itself.  Tucked into the front window are business cards, regrettably made in haste.  

My business card design, alas, was a sad wreck.  Never use a cheap laptop with crummy screen to produce colors!  Also, calling yourself an author is a faux pas if your work has not yet been published.  Technically, if you count self-publication, I am an author.  But since my goal is to be published by an actual publishing house, I should still be calling myself just a "writer".  Oops.

Also tucked into that front flap is the World's Smallest Dummy Book.

The World's Smallest Dummy Book!  Amusing that the crowning glory of my portfolio is small enough that it should come with a magnifying glass.  But I was able to use that as an ice-breaking joke, and just about everyone I showed it to read it with enthusiasm.

Why is it so small?  It's not a final dummy book, of the sort I would send to potential publishers.  It's what I put together as a test, to make sure the text works in 32 pages, and to match the text with images for the first time.  This is how I made it:

Those are three-by-five cards, with the text of the manuscript taped on.  I sketched out the images onto these cards with a sharpie.  Then I photocopied them.  I then cut-and-pasted the photocopies some more, setting up pages with fronts and backs properly aligned, and then I had that mess copied on double-sided prints.  Then I cut out the pages and stapled them.

I would love to show the interior sketches here, but at this point I need to keep the art off of the internet if I ever hope to get it published.  Kerfoo.

I got some ego-boosting compliments from Encore-goers about my art, which doesn't surprise me given that I was a trained illustrator in a room full of mostly non-artists.  But, surprisingly, I also got great compliments on my verse!  There was one person who told me that my verse didn't sound at all forced.  Coming from a writer, I treasure that feedback.

Moving forward, I would like to hook up a critique group in my area.  I got a couple of leads there at Encore.  I assume it'll take a while for that to happen, though.  In the mean time, it is time for me to move along to the final dummy book.  But in order for that to happen, I could really use a giant cork board so that I can pin the full-sized sketches on the wall in order.  Kind of like this:

Hey, lookie there!  Those are some big sheets of homasote freshly covered in white paint.  Now I just have to bribe my husband into holding them up while I screw them onto the walls.  Then my studio will feel pleasantly like a classroom back in RISD's illustration building.  I never thought I would miss that neglected old tub of a building enough to imitate it.  Next thing I know, I'll be beating on a piece of pipe with a wrench to simulate the noises made by the radiators.

Confidence

I find that when I stop doing an activity for a few years, and then pick it up again, deep and profound insights about that activity come crashing into me.  This time, it's drawing with a brush.  I never trusted myself to draw with a brush.  There were occasions when I did it, and I had great results - such as a cat study that I painted for my college-entry portfolio way back as a nugget.  But then I would try again and it was like every mark I made was put on the paper with a wet noodle.

Now I get it.  Drawing with a brush is exactly like playing music.  The minute you doubt yourself, you start screwing up your performance.  It takes an absurd belief in yourself to make a confident line.

And part of making this medium work for me involves believing that even if the line isn't at all what I intended, that it's still a good line that I can work with.  As long as I can embrace the flubs and erratic wiggles, then the medium is still mine to do with as I please.

Another part of it is that I have to calm myself in a meditative manner before making the first mark.  Ironically, I seem to be able to do this consistently even though I arrive at each little art session jittery with eagerness to use my precious time well.

Anyway, the above is much more tight than I plan to paint my book illustrations, but it needed to be done.  And the fact that I could do it loads me with more confidence.

And there still is no good way to put wings on a quadruped.

Up, Down

Dragons going up!

Dragons going down!

I'll be sad when I start making finished art for this book, because I won't be able to share it online as I go.  (Because no publisher would want to publish something that was swimming about on the Internet, in case you are wondering.)  But for now, I can enjoy sharing my studies.  Stay tuned for more dragons!

A Tale of Two Styles

Image one: five hours of work.  Warm brown on a warm gray paper.  Image two: an hour and a half.  Navy blue on a cool blue paper.  The dragon on the left was done in a half hour flat.

Okay, so there are a few anatomy problems with the right-hand dragon in the second image.  Those hind feet!  Those wings!  But I consider them a worthy trade for the more fluid lines and the sacred increase in speeeeed!

I discovered that, to a degree, I can erase my dark lines by scrubbing at them with a wet brush.  (For those wondering, the medium here is gouache, which is opaque watercolor.)

A non-artist of mine offered the best praise possible: she couldn't tell the difference between the styles of the two images.  My son, who is four, gave what for him would be considered a long and serious look, before commenting, soberly, that "it has too many heads."

My apologies for the poor image quality!  Given the choice between making art or properly documenting it, I must choose the former is I ever hope to get anything done.

I keep getting this giddy thought that I don't have a teacher standing over my shoulder poo-pooing my use of outlines.  I'm getting away with something, and it makes me want to cackle naughty laughter!

A Little at a Time

Here is the same image, this time with highlights added.  I literally finished this with a screaming toddler wrapped around my leg.

Whenever I start a big project, I am hit by a singularly unproductive wave of jittery energy to do everything all at once.  This wave is driven by fear of various sorts: fear that I have to prove myself, fear that my work isn't good enough; fear that I don't have enough time.  Writer Deborah Marcus humorously addresses the latter fear in a recent blog post.  My wave of energy invariably crashes onto the pointy reality that I don't have boundless open time, and leaves me in a funk.

But I have successfully tackled a few long-term projects over the years, and they have given me a road map through the rocks.  First order of business: squelch the wave of jittery energy!  Kill all hopes of accomplishing anything in a hurry!  Doing a little every day or every few days is very very productive over a long period of time.

Prior to having kids, I did a painting a day in oils to learn the medium.  I finished 200-plus paintings over the course of a year.  This I did primarily by hauling myself out of bed at the time of day when I would rather sleep.  Then, while pregnant with my second child, AND working, I wrote and self-published a rather hefty cookbook for food banks to use as a fundraiser. That work was done after Gabe was in bed, and later, after both kids were asleep.  I basically gave up a year of television and games to do that, and it was worth it.

It's nice to be back in the saddle.

The Giant's Socks

Here is today's naptime progress.  I found some inspiration in one of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators's previous Golden Kite Award winners:

You wouldn't know it to look at this tiny image, but Watson uses a technique not unsimilar to what I am building towards: a transparent medium on top of a drawing, that is then touched up with a opaque medium.  He uses watercolor and egg tempera, specifically.

I am particularly attracted to the way he handles his drawings.  The lines are painted over with lines of color.  Every object is essentially outlined with a darker shade of the color that it is filled with.  In this way, he carefully preserves his elegant and naturalistic representations of plants and animals, while addig an extra boost of saturation.  The amateur botanist in me swoons at the specific plants elegantly filling the corners of his action scenes!

Although I have no intention of imitating him to this degree, I could spend an hour staring at the knit socks he so lovingly painted onto the giant. Watson rendered each and every thread!

Sketches and Plato

I am pleased with my drawing progress. Here are two studies of my main characters, in plain-Jane no. 2 pencil, on gray paper. Next I will try a combination of watercolors and gouache as I did with the last study. But this time I will be letting the gray of the paper pull its own weight. The purpose of the dark paper is so that I don't have to cover the entire surface with paints, which takes time, and isn't the best use of watercolor. 

Most of my story takes place in a cave, which means a lot of dark images. Then I can switch to white paper for the above-ground parts of the story.

Speaking of caves, one of my readers asked me if I was familiar with Plato's allegory of the cave. I looked it up, and wow! I have quite by chance rewritten a story that I had never read. Plato's allegory involves people in a cave, watching shadows.  Mine involves dragons in a cave, with hoarded treasure playing the role of Plato's shadows.

If I were a novice, I would now be quaking in my socks, wondering if this were plagiarism or copyright infringement. Or I would be wallowing in fear that woe-is-me I must be too unoriginal to be a professional. At this, I now laugh! I could certainly have deliberately rewritten Plato's allegory both ethically and legally. As for originality, hah! There is nothing new under the sun. The art of writing lies in making the old stuff sound new.  (Incidentally that was only one of two things I learned from Shakespeare.  The other thing was a list of archaic naughty words.)

No, the me of now does not in any way find this distressing. Let me put this another way: I have unintentionally reinvented a story written by none other than Plato! I mist permit myself, for a moment, to wallow in some fat, juicy ego, because right now I seriously rock. 

Removing Artist's Block

Closing in on a style.

After having noodled around with a few drawing and painting styles, I have come to some major conclusions. Conclusion one: college convinced me that my home-grown approach to drawing was somehow inferior to what they had to teach. As a result, I switched styles repeatedly in college. But my original approach still results in both a process and product that I prefer.

Conclusion two: my strength is in drawing. By choosing opaque finishing mediums, chiefly acrylic and oil paints, I was making a ton of unnecessary work for myself, because the bulk of my time spent painting went into tediously protecting my drawing. And the times when bad painting obliterated a good drawing were heartbreaking, and unavoidable.

Conclusion three: worrying about the archival properties of mediums has held me back. I always saw watercolor as less permanent, and therefore less worthy of my time.

Conclusion four: somewhere along the way I got the notion that a good grasp of anatomy is both entirely necessary, and can only be maintained with an endless stream of life drawings. These ideas gave me an underlying feeling that due to my lack of willingness to be a 24-hour art machine, I could never succeed as an illustrator. In reality, had I spent a little time reading children's picture books or viewing other professional illustration outside of my narrow range of interest, I would have seen how bogus these ideas are.

These blocks will not hold me back any longer.

Loosen Up

An experiment in spontaneity and speed.

Anyway. I have a manuscript. I am making art. Ironically, given that my education was in illustration, I am struggling with the art. And old dichotomy is rearing its head: either I can enjoy the product of my efforts, or I can enjoy the process. In college, and then after that in the games industry, I had a habit of knuckling down and grinding through to get the product that I was after. The actual art-making process could be so tedious, I had to actively use music to pound my brain into submission while I worked. This time around I intend to have a more healthy relationship with my art.

Coincidentally, if I expect to make more than minimum wage as an artist, I need an art style that isn't glacially slow. This is why your typical children's book looks more like Dr.Seuss than Dinotopia. Seeing as I learned how to paint by studying Dinotopia, I have to set out in a direction that is quite new to me.

College-me would have turned her nose up at choosing a simple art style for economy. The me of now is ready and willing! But where to start? I have been messing around with watercolors, gouache, pens, and pencils. Oddly enough, I may have to try black bic pen next. College me would have gagged. But if the ink can play well with watercolor, it's a process that I know would be fast. I drew a whole perspective tutorial for conceptart.org in bic, and much of that without pencil. So, it's worth further investigation.

Practice

I do my best writing while nursing the baby,
I tap out the words with my thumb;
The dishes neglected, a diaper needs changing,
The shower is coated with scum.
Though Facebook is calling and laundry need doing,
Instead I'm attempting to rhyme;
My Swiss-army smart phone allows me to wrangle
The very best use of my time.


Here is one of my attempts to work out character and art style for my picture book, as well as a snippet of doggerel to practice meter.