Monday, July 11, 2011

What I'm Working On


I worked all weekend, so today doesn't really feel like Monday to me. And I usually post on Friday, but Kathy Weller and I have switched days. So I'm surprised I actually remembered that I was posting today!

I'm currently working on another picture book for Kar Ben Publishing. They are a lovely publishing house to work for. They let me have a lot of freedom. Picnic at Camp Shalom was the first book I did for them. The setting was summer camp and there was a lot of variety in the scenes. This current book takes place in a classroom with lots of kids, so it has been challenging for me to come up with creative ways to make the classroom look interesting on each of the spreads.


I'm also using my new printer, which I posted about here, that prints out waterproof ink onto my watercolor paper. It's working out wonderfully and I'm much more relaxed while I paint, knowing if I make a horrible mistake, I can just print out another drawing. As with the last book, I am painting this book in layers. The characters are painted separately so that I can resize or manipulate them on the spread if I need to. I don't know about you, but if I walk away from artwork for 24 hours, when I come back to it, sometimes I can see glaring errors or distortions that just don't look right. Having the different elements on separate layers in photoshop makes it much easier to correct.

Have a great week everyone!

5 comments:

Alicia Padrón said...

So so so sooooo cute!!

Deb said...

Awwww, thanks Ali!!!

Maria Bogade said...

Oh this is so very beautiful, Deborah! I'm sure it will be just as lovely as "Picnic at Camp Shalom"!!!!

Phyllis Harris said...

This is SO adorable! I love your art so much, Deb!
I love working in layers, too! The possibilities are endless, aren't they?!
I recently did some traditional watercolor art for a lift-the -flap/board book and by having one background and just painting the different elements separately, I was able to get a seamless lift-the-flap images to work so much easier by using the scanning and Photoshop method.

Alicia Padrón said...

I think is brilliant that you work like this Deb!

I may try it but I have a feeling that my style could be a bit trickier. Art with a line work around it works much better for this. My art line hardly ever shows so illos might appear as if floating on the background. I'll experiment with it a bit though.