Sad Simon & The Woodland Creatures

The new semester has just begun. I've been looking forward to it all summer. I'm gonna be honest, it's gonna be a tough semester. Maybe even a tough year from here till next fall. As I've entered the semester I've been trying to make time whenever available to try to get ahead on my assignments. The other day after completing two big assignments I took a break and went home and just sat and watched a movie with my wife Brooke. The next day I woke up and I was already behind. I guess that's just something I'll need to get used to in the business of illustration. It's incredibly competitive and there's a lot of talent out there, so it seems that i'll need to continue pushing hard the rest of my life to keep up with the field i'm in. Hope I don't sound too negative there.

Here's a piece that I just finished for my Children's Book Illustration class. It's based on a short story about a group of woodland creatures that get together for a special occasion to dine on sweet treats and baked goodies but one small woodland creature named Simon didn't get an invitation and he was left out in the cold. I felt a little bit like I had a break through with this piece. I did something different than I usually do and I left most of my original sketch in tact and used it as a way of creating texture in the figures. I spent a lot more time working on the drawing this time around and I really feel like it improved my end result. I don't feel like I have much of a style at this point but this method kind of introduces an element that I might want to use again in the future and maybe that will form into something of a style. I submitted this to my professor Will Terry and he gave me some good input on how to improve it. I've actually learned a great deal from him about how to design a drawing. If you go to his blog you'll find he's got some great work and also a link to his online tutorials called "folio academy". It's through folio academy that I watched one of his video lessons called "how to design a drawing". I think about things in that video series nearly every time I begin a new illustration. 

Digital Painting - photoshop - Children's book illustration - woodland creatures