"Go weird or go home"

"Go weird or go home" - me

This sketchbook page is one of my recent favorites, and the quote was something I wrote down a few days later. I want to live, draw, and paint by it. Is that wrong? I feel like my best chance at success as an author/illustrator is to channel my inner weirdo as much as possible. Sick Taco? Awkward Hug Series? It wakes me up and keeps me drawing to see what new weirdos will appear. I'm not sure how to translate these little nuggets into actual manuscripts or dummies, but I know there is something there worth treasuring.

From the Sketchbook

It's that time of year for me. When I need to put the brakes on hard with work and switch gears to family. Sometimes it's a tough transition. To help, I've been sketching just a page a day of whatever pops into my head (or whatever nice twitter friends suggest!). Sketching just for fun can be tough to make time for if you're too busy with deadline or life, but it's SO worth it, right? You can see more pages are over at my blog or on my instagram - @ginapineapple.

Happy Thanksgiving: Sketchbook

Wishing you all the best on this Thanksgiving Day. May your bellies, tables, and hearts be full. I'm so thankful for my family, health, home, friends, work, and picture books (of course!).

If you see Man Turkey today, send him to my house. I'd like to give him some tail feathers sometime - so he actually LOOKS like a turkey. ;)

From My Sketchbook

Just a quick colored sketch from my digital sketchbook today. Sorry for the short post, but I've got lots of irons in the fire and several looming deadlines this week. Hope you are all enjoying the last days of summer.

The ipad as Sketchpad

I got a new ipad 2 a couple of weeks ago. I have a two story house, so I use it a lot around the house as a mini laptop, collecting and sending email, surfing the net, etc. But I really wanted to try to use it as a sketchpad too. So I immediately downloaded a group of apps that I could play with to see if there was anything I could work with that made sense to me. I did buy a Wacom Bamboo Stylus, which was only $30. Much better than using a finger!

I started with Sketchbook Express, which is a free app that you can get on the ipad and on your computer. I find the version I use on my computer is far superior with my wacom tablet, so I was a bit disappointed with the ipad version as far as "feel" goes. I also installed Brushes and ASKetch. Haven't played with Brushes too much, but ASKetch is a fabulous simple black & white sketch program for drawing with your fingers. You don't need to use any tools...you just draw and it shades in lights and darks automatically which is very cool.

But the app that I fell in love with hands down is ArtRage. If you use Photoshop, you will love this program. It's easy, straight forward, has all the tools, papers, layers you will need. I did this little sketch on ArtRage and used watercolor paper to add texture to the drawing. There are all the tools of a fine artist including pallete knives. You can easily adjust each tool to it's own specs. The watercolor brush can be used as wet paper or dry. You can take a photo with the ipad and "push pin" it to your image to use as reference, or you can use an image or photo to trace. You can email your artwork, save in a gallery, etc. Images are not hi-res, but they are large in dimension. I just love this program!

From the sketchbook..

© Copyright Alicia Padrón

A little drawing from my sketchbook.

These three seemed to appear out of nowhere and I kind of love them. :o)

sketchbook week

© Copyright Alicia Padrón 2010

I doodled this on one of the corners of my sketchbook two days ago.

I wasn't thinking while drawing and this little guy ended up on the page. Come to think of it, I think I was feeling just like him at the time I drew this.

Mind works in mysterious ways doesn't it?

Character Development

I envy artists that have cool sketchbooks....with their beautiful pencil or ink drawings and added watercolor washes. Beautiful montages of characters or scenes. I don't work that way. I sketch on big pads, little pads, tracing paper, xerox paper, whatever is in front of me. And I draw with a regular old No. 2 pencil, like we used in grade school. Of course I've got sketches laying around all over my studio. I stuff them into drawers, find them laying on the floor and sometime months later I'll find a little sketch floating around that inspires me to create a new character or piece of art. What I love about Photoshop is that I can scan in all my little quirky drawings into my computer, pile them onto one sheet, add a scanned piece of lined paper behind them and voila! A page from my sketchbook :o)

Happy Friday everyone!

Illustration Friday: Resolve

Rizzy was resolved to find out what was making that noise in the attic....

This week we're continuing the theme of New Year's Resolution, and something that nags at me EVERY year around this time, is to get over my fear of the unknown... in my sketchbook. I've been really bad about doing any free/fun sketching the past few months and I'd like to get back to it!

from my sketchbook

Here are some doodles from my sketchbook.

Ahhh... to be a kid again :o)

Sketchbook

This is a sketch I drew recently. The little penguin kind of spoke to me.. so I decided to sketch him again in color.

Meet Nino:

Then without thinking much I started writing a story about him. I decided to give it a try and work on a dummy. I still have much more to go.. just have a preliminary story so far but what I learned is that sometimes one small thing can spark your imagination and may lead to something bigger.

We should always be open to possibilities..

Sketchbook

Lately, I've been drawing ELVES.
Here are some of those elves for your enjoyment. :)

Sketchbook

Here's the latest sketch in my book waiting to go to finish.

Weekly theme: sketchbook

Two girls, eight dogs and one duck.

Sketchbook

A random page from one of hundreds of sketchbooks. The rare thing about this page, for me, is that it doesn't contain any shopping lists, phone numbers, or to-do lists. :-P

sketchbook

Birds and bugs. Little bits for a picture book I'm currently illustrating. I realized I've never really drawn bugs before. Not really a bug person - creepy crawly icky. And here in Texas, most of them are too big too! Shudder.......

Sketchbook

This is the sketch composition stage of a piece I recently completed!!!

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This is a really rough outline of ideas for the kids - working on outline of characters,
and thinking about the overall composition and viewpoint.


Here are some of the kids with a bit more personality and detail fleshed out...


Here is the teacher -- from a very rough outline idea, to a bit of a more fleshed-out sketch...


Hope you enjoyed the "show-and-tell"!
:)
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sketchbook

Laura is a hard act to follow. =O)

Here is a sketch that I'm hoping to take to final soon.

sketchbook

I've really enjoyed using colored pencils lately for sketching.  Here's a sample of a finished sketch for a recent Illustration Friday theme, "Plain".  

Colored pencil on tracing paper.