So more on creating work for SCBWI, part 2! Let’s start from the very beginning- the horrifically awful looking composition doodle.
Every drawing I make starts with something this loose and scribbly. It’s easier to work out a idea if I’m just doodling it out first- better to figure out it’s not going to work after five minutes of scribbling than hour after hour of painting! Now the idea is good, but the composition needs some work. Next step is to do a rough drawing.
The characters are designed and positioned and the layout is fixed up. The statue is moved over and the characters are smaller so they don’t take up too much space. Time to clean the drawing up!
The placement of the paint is figured out and the tiger gets repositioned slightly. The linework is touched up- and this version was sent to Patti Ann Harris for review as part of the SCBWI class.
The feedback I got could be basically boiled down to ‘more context!’ The tiger was being naughty, but I needed to show a bit more of his rampage of paint. I decided to add an official looking building to the background to convey that nothing was safe from the tiger’s artistic tendencies- statues, buildings and even his friends!
I then scan the drawing into Photoshop and roughly color it in. It helps me plan what colors I’m going to use when I break out the paints. I use gouache, so it can be trouble having to replace an entirely different color late in the process.
Here we have the final painting! Some of the colors have changed from the color roughs to the final art (I decided that pinstripes on Tiger’s pants would be a bit more stylish). And there you have it- a painting from sketchy, scribbly start to colorful, paint-spattered finish!
