Rainy Thursday

Rainy days like today always make me feel happy. This is a sketch from a book dummy that I am working on right now (the same one as in my previous post). Since I can't crawl back into bed this morning, I'll cozy up with hot tea and daydream about it instead. Thanks for stopping by!

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Howdy! Thought it might be fun to do a work-in-progress-type-post. The story is something I wrote and I'm working on putting a dummy together and then working up the nerve to submit it sometime this year (a New Year's Resolution). We begin with a thumbnail (2x3, something like that).
This was another sketch from a different thumbnail. There were a few. Very "ruff" :)

After moving things around a little, I made the sketches less-sketchy. Knew there would be a wiener dog, but didn't know the big dog would be a great dane until I started re-working it.
I used transfer paper to transfer my drawing onto my nice watercolor paper (I used to work for the Department of Redundancy Department). I inked it all with my trusty Micron pens and began painting with watercolors the following day. The springer leaping for the frisbee is our old dog, Larry!
Action Photo: The paint is still wet. Oooooh....

The finished painting! This is a photo, I haven't scanned it yet, so hope it reads well (click on it to get a better view)! It ended up taking more time to paint that I thought it would, but I am happy with how it turned out. The blue ribbon was fun to paint (actually blue, turquoise, and violet), the silver tabby is our old cat, Lila, and the photo of the dog with the bone in his mouth was taken directly from a thumbnail sketch. The dog has that classic, goofy, young labrador look and I think it might be my favorite thing in this painting. I have no idea how long this took from beginning to end, but it spanned a few naptimes and a whole lot of iTunes! In other news, I am twittering now. It has been a really fun way to meet other illustrators and authors and see what folks are up to. Hope you had a nice weekend!