Amelia Earhart in color 2009

Well it's finished! I spent the last couple of days painting my new Amelia Earhart illustration. I think it came out pretty nice. I especially like the color scheme. Let me know what you think! Here's hoping the new movie is decent as well. This paintings is available for sale if you are interested, $500.

Amelia Earhart

This week there is a renewed interest in Amelia Earhart with the bio pic movie starring Hilary Swank playing soon and an exhibit of her story with original belongings opening up at The Museum of Flight in Seattle next weekend. This movie really has me excited (I hope it's good!) and has renewed my interest in Ms. Earhart. I have long had a bit of a crush on her. I have read some books and magazine articles about her and ten years ago completed an oil painting portrait after being inspired by her story (see below). I am a sucker for stories of adventure especially set during the 1920's and 30's. I love the look of that era. Her life story has it all as far as i'm concerned.

Anyway, in the frenzy of new interest in her story I have been inspired again to complete a painting of her, this time geared more as a sample for the children's book market. The older painting above I like but I wanted something lighter and more fun and also frankly I think I am a better painter now. I will be working on it this week. Here is a color study and a little drawing of her face for the painting. I hope you like them! I will post the final painting when completed. If any one in the publishing world is reading this, please consider me for a picture book bio on her. It would be a dream job for me!

Color studies-which one do you like?

As I mentioned earlier I am working on a new project for McGraw-Hill. It's a landscape for the cover of a teaching guide. Eventually I will do it in either oil or acrylic but for now I wanted to play a bit with color. I took my original drawing into Photoshop and pretty quickly applied color. Though on the final I will use a traditional medium, at this stage it's nice to save some time. I know the benefits of Photoshop!

The first color study is more traditional and the second is more in keeping with the colors they wanted me to use.

Which do you prefer..?

Option #1

Option #2

Last week I hung a bunch of my landscapes at a friend's workplace as a little mini show for the enjoyment of her cubicle co-workers. I wanted to have a few new images so completed these two paintings for the show. The one of the barn is from our new place n Bellingham. This scene is just a few hundred feet from our house. The lighthouse image is from our trip to New England in 2008. It was in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

They are available for sale if you are interested. "Yew Street" (11x14 inches, oil on canvas) is available for $175 and "Old Saybrook" (14x18 inches, oil on canvas) is $200. Hope you enjoy them! It's always good to break out the paints just for fun outside the confines of an illustration project. On a side note, this week I received a new project from the publisher McGraw-Hill in Chicago to paint a landscape for a school textbook. Yeah! They seem to be a recurring theme for me lately.

"Yew Street"

14x18 inches, oil on canvas

$175

"Old Saybrook"

14x18 inches, oil on canvas

$200

The waiting is the hardest part

One thing many people don't realize with publishing is what a long process it is to get a new book in the book stores or libraries. This past year I finished two books that I am now waiting to receive the finished product on. The art for the book "Hot Pursuit" (Kar-Ben Publishing) was completed in February and I am hoping to receive my copies by the end of the year. It is currently waiting to be printed in Minneapolis. I imagine my art is sitting in a drawer in that fair city. My other book "The Can Man" (Lee & Low Books) which I finished in July is in the beginning process of being printed. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will see color proofs of the book show up on my door step. I can hardly wait! I just found out the art is currently at the printers in Hong Kong! This is the first time my art has been sent over seas. It just blows my mind. I even looked at a map to gage the distance across the Pacific Ocean. I love maps. My art is better traveled than me!

This all brings me back to the topic of waiting. I probably have the worst type of personality to be in the book making business. I am so impatient. When I finish the art I have a need for instant gratification. I want to see my art in book form, like, now. Luckily I have other projects to distract me from my impatience, schools to contact, landscapes to paint, a class to prepare for, a little house cleaning? My thoughts though always return to the projects I am waiting on. Until I receive the final package of books in the mail some 6 months or more after mailing the art I can't quite get the project out of my mind. I need the finished product to feel some closure.

Time to get back to work. After painting a couple of landscapes for a show, my Bunker Hill project is calling. Another book I will eventually have to add to my wait list.

Survival in the Snow poster image

In November I will be presenting my recent book Survival in the Snow at various Sno-isle libraries and schools and needed to give them an image for a poster. I decided to create a collage of one of the scenes that shows some of my process with sketches, photos, and the final painting. As it relates to my previous post I thought I would share it. Enjoy!

Illustrating a book cover step by step

This past summer I finished work on the picture book "The Can Man" written by Laura E. Williams, published by Lee and Low Books, due for release in spring 2010. It's a wonderful fiction story about a young boy who wants a skateboard for his birthday but due to tough economic times has to earn the money himself by collecting can in his neighborhood. The title refers to a local homeless man he meets along the way. The last painting I did for the book was the cover and I wanted to share my process of completing the illustration. While this was the cover, I use the same steps for all of my paintings. I hope you find this enlightening!

So when starting work on the  book I began with sketches of all my characters and what I wanted them to look like. These are the main characters Tim and "The Can Man".

Also at this time I did lots of research traveling around Seattle looking for settings for the book and taking lots of photos. I found a perfect street and used a great apartment building there as Tim's home.

When it came time to start coming up with ideas for the cover I began with several pages of sketches called thumbnail sketches. I try to explore all the possibilities until I get something I like. I usually show all of them to the publisher and together we choose a few we like best. This is one of the pages.

We narrowed it down to two thumbnails. We liked the concept of showing Tim beginning to develop the idea of how to earn money for a skateboard.  A moment that isn't really shown in the book. The next step was to take the ideas and draw them larger so a final decision could be made by the publisher. You can see here that they are both pretty much the same except for Tim. We were unsure if he should be more interested in what "The Can Man" was doing or not.

They decided on having a more curious Tim which I agreed. The next step for me was to do a few color studies which makes it much easier having the color decisions made when doing the final painting. I take my original drawing into Photoshop and apply color. Its so easy if I want to try out different colors! You can also see the designer and I were beginning to think where the type should go.

The next step is to take photos of my models dressed in costume. Since my paintings end up being pretty realistic I like to have great reference with good expression, lighting and details to work from. Here are a few of the photos I took.

I loved painting Tim's shiny warm coat! Now its time to complete a final drawing based on my original drawing and reference photos. After the drawing is completed I will often take it into Photoshop and make any final adjustments, moving and scaling elements etc. 

I then take this drawing and use my projector to transfer it to my stretched and gessoed canvas. Finally its time to start painting! I usually work in oil paint. Its thick, painterly and dries slowly which allows me to rework a painting. Below is the final painting!

Usually it takes me 2-3 days to actually paint it. You may notice if you compare the final drawing and painting that there are some subtle changes. The Can Man is looking up more and Tim's head is not tilted as much. I made the changes while painting because I felt they made the scene more engaging. Hope you like it! I will post the final cover design here once it has been approved for release. My art will soon be shipped to the printer in Hong Kong. You will be hearing more about "The Can Man" in the next few months.  I am very excited about this book!