second baby illustration -- little boy blue

to welcome a new little boy into the girl-laden lot, i made a piece for mr. spenser everett that was based on little boy blue. again, i accomplished it all on my wacom cintiq, and i documented a bit of the process below.

i started out with a brown grounding in the background to work off of, just as i would a painting. i wrote out the colors that i wanted in my sketch layer, and then quickly blocked them out in my painting layer so that everything could come together faster.

as you can see, i started to lay in the dark details, like these on the house, after i had layed in the majority of the basic colors. my "brush" technique was influenced by this tutorial from digital arts online.

i started to actually lay in the brighter color details after that.

as you can see, the sketch layer remained available to me to work from as i moved forward in the project. i tried to bring all areas together at the same time so that it was a united piece. the last this i had to address as of this point was the boy himself.

when the sketch level was hidden, you can see the level of completion in the overall piece, and how the details had yet to be added to the boy.

and the piece is complete! i'm really happy with how this turned out. i hope you enjoyed seeing the steps in the process! it's good to know that you can still get a fulfilling "painting" experience when you cannot use paints at the moment. its definitely not the same as a palette, a brush, and my pigments, but it's the next best thing.

baby gift #1 - mary mary quite contrary

there are an awful lot of babies in our lives right now! we're meeting new little people every day, and getting ready for the arrival of others. i decided to make a few gifts last week for some very special babies in my life.

first, there is the gift for my friend kelly's daughter-to-be, kayla aubrey. kelly is due in january (the day before anna's bday), and her shower was saturday the 24th. i decided to go to nursery rhymes for inspiration, and decided on "mary, mary, quite contrary", as kelly is an avid gardener.


the piece was started and completed on my cintiq screen, since i still haven't figured out how best to paint in the house without harming anna with the fumes. but as i've learned, i can get the feeling of painting really easily with my cintiq -- no wet paint and brush, unfortunately, but otherwise it's pretty close.

i went with a very fantastical version of the nursery rhyme, as i found out what the rhyme really was about (bloody mary!) and i had to move as far from that as possible.

kelly seemed to love it! i really hope she did.

enjoy!