town scene

small color sketch for another page of the book
I love painting skies.
4 more pages then I will have all of the dummy book figured out with rough colors and some pages completely finished. I think after this part- once I see everything locked in place- things should start to move fasssster.

sketches: More Tillfords

These are just "blocking" sketches
Oh and I want you to know that I know haha that the hands are really wonky in this picture and I need to redraw them. I have good and bad hand days sometimes. This was a bad hand day.

The Tillford's

Their dinning room. They own a large fishery in Rainetown, and also a "Netterie." A place where women make the long nets that make the city so famous.

EDIT- I decided to can this picture, it won't be in the book. I don't like it very much

picking up anytime soon?

Well it's been a month and I'm still working on this image and I'm only at the background! Now that work has started up and things are settling in a little, hopefully I can work out a daily painting schedule. I think this book is still going to take a long while yet to finish. I have InDesign now and I think that will help me lay things out, but I have to teach myself how to use the program.

I'm thinking next spring things will be all finished. I just can't work on it every week with my current schedule.

color study

Here is another color study for the book


That light is too bright on the floor I think but I need to eat something! Then I will fix it!
Adieu.

Color study of Mr. Stevens.

Online I found this photograph of singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens. I always liked the picture because it has fantastic colors in it. (I'm seeing him in Portland ME soon!)

I thought it might be fun to do a quick study of it. There are so many fun parts in this photograph, I knew I would have fun. (Plus I admit I think he is oh so handsome, so I have no problem studying this photo intently whilst painting it...haha)

In the photo there is a little glint of blue light hitting his teeth. Ha! that was my favorite thing to paint.

This is what I was working on when I got distracted with Sufjan:
I lost some art for the book when my hard drive got ...um erased. So today I worked on making another treatment for the title page. It's slicker looking I think, but It wasn't fun having to go back and redo when I need to go forward!

8.17.09

Molly makes a delivery

Small and quick color study for a painting. It's harder to pin colors down, especially when it's a
night time scene. (But they are my favorite)

(double click on the image and it gets a little bigger)

Molly and her cart design

Molly's house and Floral Shop burned down ( to See Her House click here ) so she sells them from a cart and wheels it into town

Concerned ladies

Azur and Asmar: The Princes Quest.

Azur and Asmar: The Princes Quest. Rating: ***and 1/5
I saw images from this French produced film a while ago and missed my chance to see it in theatres, so I recently Netflixed it. The promotional stills looked fabulous- gorgeous patterns and intricate color schemes adorn this Middle Eastern Fairy Tale. The colors and backgrounds in this movie are amazing. But, when I actually started watching the film I cringed for the first 15 minutes. The movie is computer animated and the figure animation is very stiff and looks like a video game. I immediately debated turning it off, but opted to start working on a project and multitask while half-listening to the story.

However, I'm really glad I started paying attention again because though it took me a while to get around the cardboardness of the characters, their voices (Arabic is such a beautiful language) and the story became very engaging.
The tale begins with a wealthy European boy Azur, being raised by an Arabic born Nanny. The nanny has a son, Asmar, and the two little boys grow immersed in two cultures- English and Arabic. (In the English dub the boy is clearly British, but I imagine it's French in the original film) The Nanny is a natural storyteller and feeds the boys tales of a quest saving a magical and beautiful "Djin Fairy." These stories captivate the boys, and both fight and quibble with each other, vowing to one day out wit the other and succeed in the quest.

Many years later, long after the Nanny is brutally swept aside and banished back to her native land, Azur's travels "far across the sea," to visit the land of his beloved caregiver and try his hand at the quest. Once he arrives, he finds that not only is he not alone in his efforts, but prejudices and superstitions stand in his way. (His blue eyes are deemed bad luck so the boy travels the countryside pretending to be blind.)

Based on a variety of Middle Eastern Fairy tales, this movie is a beautiful and simple morality tale about celebrating different cultures and the importance of sharing a worldly heritage and just plain gettin' along! (So much so that entitles state, "This film was made in Paris by filmmakers from all over the world, and we all got along!!," followed by a list of all the different nationalities of the artists.)

If you can get past the bad mouth syncing and not so graceful movements of the characters, the backgrounds, voices, story and visuals hopefully will draw you in.