Country Characters

One of the clients I work for owns  www.cartoonmaps.com

I do the art and layout for many of the maps.

One of those maps is for the Darke County Fair.

Each year they have a big musical act at the grandstands.

Each year I get to do cartoon versions of "The Band" for the map.

So far the acts have been REO Speedwagon & Styx.

Each year I put more effort into the characters because the map itself only needs some cosmetic changes to freshen it up. 

This years band is Lady Antebellum.

Below is how they will look on the map.

I enjoyed doing drawing them. I hope the band will actually get to see themselves.

Here are some of the characters that are wandering around the map this year.

Why a guy in a fish costume?

Why not?

Ribbit!

I haven't been able to post anything lately due to being busy with a day job and housework, but things have  started hopping again around here in the form of freelance work so I'll just have to start burning the candle at both ends again.

In the mean time here's a page from my sketchbook.

Frogs were just on my mind that day.

One of them may end up in a future book dummy.

Bird book art

Okay, I'm ready for some constructive criticism on what I have so far.

Here's the set up.

This art is for a combination self promo piece and book dummy.

The book is a children's board book for kids from birth to 6 years old. You know, the thick cardboard pages that the young 'uns like to chew on.

Each image is a 2 page spread. Each spread features a bird of a certain color. Red Bird, blue bird, green bird,...

There will be 10 spreads in all and a wrap around cover.

I wanted to keep the art simple without being simple flat colors. Not even clean colors.

Here's the art...

RED BIRD

ORANGE BIRD

YELLOW BIRD

GREEN BIRD

BLUE BIRD

PURPLE BIRD

PINK BIRD

Pink bird admires her Prince.

BROWN BIRD

Brown Bird bakes bread

BLACK BIRD

WHITE BIRD

WHITE BIRD alternative

Could also be WHITE BIRD Walks on windy Wednesdays

I don't have the wrap around cover art figured out yet.

In case you forgot by the time you made it all of the way down here, I'm looking for your thoughts on what's posted here. Think children's board book and let me hear what you have to say.

Depending on how this turns out I have some pages for an alphabet book roughed out already.

If any of you out there are graphic designers let me know what I could do to make the type treatment better.

I'm Blue

It's been a little while since I have posted anything.

I've been working a temp job that makes it hard to get anything done.

I have been working on my art though.

Like this.

It's one page of a board book concept. It's our basic color color book.

I'm in the process of painting the pages now. I have 7 done and 3 more to do, as well as some alternate pages to choose from.

This is the blue page.

The type is to make it clear what I'm doing. It will most likely change when I get feed back from the graphically inclined.

The finished size of the book is supposed to be 5" by 10" opened up. It will have rounded corners.

Dragon

I have had to put my personal projects on hold lately due to taking a temp job during the day to make some steady income for a bit.

I am still freelancing as an illustrator. I have a couple of projects that I am working on at night.

That doesn't really leave me any time for anything else if I want to be able to sleep at night.

here's a partial peak at one of the freelance projects.

I can't tell you what it's for yet, but I can tell you that it's being created using Adobe Illustrator.

I'll be doing another one featuring a "lost in space" type of robot.

New rough concepts

I'm working on rough ideas for more portfolio pieces.

This one is pretty easy to read. It's a nice bright country scene of two boys fishing with their pet dog.

I the lower right corner will be a Kingfisher who has caught the first fish.

The background will be the lake and the shore with a simple fishing cabin.

I'm seeing a blue green lake, a dark brown-black tree and reflected light on the boys/dog.

As you can see I still need to take a good look at my dog reference to get his anatomy correct.

This one is my idea for the IF web site.

The word of the week is "rescue."

This is my mermaid rescuing a sea turtle from a fishing net.

I'm thinking a purple and yellow fantasy type of color scheme would be good here.

Her hair will fill up the top right corner of the image.

I wanted to do some simpler images as well, so I started drawing a character that filled most of one half of the page. I wanted to get a info page in science book feel.

This guy is holding up his peanut butter sandwich. The facts would be printed on the white part of the bread.

I'm not sure what she will be holding up yet.

Any suggestions?

I will be doing some paintings of characters standing on their own for practice/filler.

I believe I'll be doing a few more rough ides before I start painting any of them.

I would like to work up a night scene and probably a winter and rainy scene also.

Part of the reason for doing these illustrations is to solidify in my mind how I draw/paint people.

Another is to see if any of the people start to reoccur and become characters that I can show in multiple images.

It's Finished!

It's Finished!

I worked into the wee hours of the night Friday night and got it most of the way done, and then did a little touch up here and there on Saturday morning and finished it up.

Here it is...

Here are some close up details..

The bird

The orange cat

and the dog

I'm happy with the way it turned out and am glad I tried out a new way of painting.

I now have a better understanding of why an underpainting is important.

I never understood why an artist would spend so much effort on an underpainting only to completely paint it over before. Now I do.

The extra step of a light coat of workable fixative over the underpainting was worth it also.

The fixative kept the water color from bleeding through the gouache.

You have to be careful not to put too much fixative on though. If you do the gouache will just puddle on the surface and not stick or cover well.

As a final step I sprayed a couple of coats of clear sealant over the image.

Gouache can pick up fingerprints and such very easily so I wanted to protect it.

I believe I will be revising my website so that this image will be the splash/home page.

The image that is up now was created digitally and I want to let visitors know that I am a traditional illustrator first and a digital illustrator second.

You can see my web site at ...

http://www.robertsnyderillustrates.com

to see what I mean.

I believe I'll be taking what I learned from this painting and revisiting my bird book ideas.

I have two ideas I want to work on. A Boardbook about colors and one about the alphabet.

Status Report 3/19/10

I was able to put some more time in on this.

I worked on the two cats the bird, the girl and the ground plane since the last post.

It's coming along fine.

I need to get it finished over the weekend because my agent wants to post it on their section of www.picture-book.com

I should be able to get it done.

I just have to do the dog and his bone, the bushes in the foreground, and some flowers on the bushes in the background and foreground, and then step back and see what needs more work before I call it done.

I'll do a good scan of it tomorrow and show some details.

IF - Expired

I found a great new way to combine two weeks worth of IF topics this week!

I started to do a piece for last Fridays topic - Subterranean but didn't have time to finish it.

So it fits perfectly into this Fridays topic - Expired.

Here's what I was able to do before time expired.

It's The Moleman and his minions in their subterrannean lair playing charades.

It's The Moleman's turn and he's trying to get his team to guess his word.

He's doing the 4th syllable - jar

See him acting like he's trying to open a jar?

His word is Kilimanjaro.

The guys on the opposing team, on the right, are telling him his time has expired - it works twice.

As you can see, I was still working out how to draw the minions and what the background was going to look like.  I couldn't remember what his subterranean lair looked like back in the 80's.

If you look a little longer you'll probably see the John Burne influence from my comic book collecting days.  He was the big cheese when I was really into comics.

Status Report 3/11/10

I was able to do some more work on this...

Mostly, I focussed on the dark green tree and the fence.

I believe I'll be changing the color of the hearts on the fence now this is not going to be finished in February. I don't want it overly hearty anymore.

Next up is everything on the ground plane.

Status Report

I finally got some time to get back to work on the girl illustration.

I started in on the background - sky, bushes, fence, and tree - with the gouache.

I want to eliminate as much of the line work in the back as possible so that it has a nice effect in the foreground.

The bushes will need more work after I have established the foreground art.

As you can see I used a blue grey on the fence to set it back.

I will continue working on the fence to make it lighter. I need it to be dark enough not to blend in with the dog. He will be white with some large patches of color.

I added a dark base coat to the tree. I'll continue to work on it so that it looks like it's in the evergreen family. Lots of needles, not leaves.

I'm happy with the way the gouache is going over the spray fix so far. In some spots I have to work the brush a bit to get the color to soak in and take hold. I'm guessing those are areas where I overlapped the fixative when spraying it.

New work

About this time last week an old client reconnected with me to do some work, a new client job got the go ahead, and some map work needed to be finished up.

Here's a bit of what the old client wanted.

There are more projects in the works with this client which is nice.

Here's a bit of what the new client wanted. It's waiting for final approval.

The client is in New Zealand so I can put a pin in that country and a mark it off my list.

The map stuff I can't show you. There aren't really any characters in it anyway.

For all 3 clients I do the work using a combination of hand drawing the rough and then pasting it into Adobe Illustrator and using it as a guide to draw the final art.

You'll notice that I have used two different approaches in the way the art is created for each client.

For the older client I used a soft blended approach without outlines.

There's a lot of gradient mesh use in that image.

The image of the girl is a flat approach using outlines. Kind of like a gouache painting.

I really have to push myself in both approaches to try to create volume in the art.

I'm not going for realism, but I don't want it to look flat like cut paper.

I like the way the girls hair is looking.

Val girl revisions - 2/18/2010

I have revised the line art for this image again after receiving some comments from the Picture Book Doodlers blog...

http://picturebookdoodlers.blogspot.com/

and from the scbwi web site.

You'll notice that I added letters to the two cats mouths and a wrapped dog bone at the feet of the dog.

I decided to keep the Bull Terrier. I like him because of the shape he makes.

I added the texture to the image, a gate - I kept it closed so that I didn't have to introduce any perspective into the image, and some additional greenery to create a bit of foreground.

The line art makes everything look like it's on the same plane right now.

I will be making sure that the background elements fall back in the painting process.

My next step will be to paint a wash of pink over the entire image.

I will probably use watercolor to do it.

I say probably because I saw a technique in a book today where the artist rubbed an even wash of color over her image using pastel and then went back in and removed the pastel in areas that needed to be lighter, then she sealed it with fixative and painted over the image with watercolor and acrylic to achieve the final art.

I might try the pastel.

I will be achieving the final art by painting with watercolor and gouache.

2/20/2010
Yesterday I worked on the under painting.
I decided to use watercolor for the underpainting because I already had the materials.
I would have had to go out to buy the right color(s) of pastel if I went with it.
As you can see I have an overall pink wash.
Then I went back in and added yellow to the sky, fencepost caps, and her scarf.

The next step will be to spray it with fixative and then start painting with more watercolor and then gouache for opaque detail.
I usually go back in at the end and do some color outlining.

Girl art

This is the second pass on the girl art I'm working on.

Here's the first rough for comparison.

You'll notice that I changed it quite a bit.
For the girl I ditched her head band and added a knit hat and scarf that I found on the web. I think it makes her look cuter and more dressed up. It gives her a better head shape as well.
My intention is to make this a February/Valentines image.
The girl is holding a "love" letter that the Postal bird will be delivering for her.
Since I made the letter bigger in the second rough I also decided to make the bird bigger.
Instead of the little chickadee type of bird I'm going with a Blue Bird. He's already dressed in the right color for the job of Postman anyway.
I'll be repositioning the bird so he sits properly on her finger.
I searched the web for dog and cat pics so that I could make the animals more realistic. One of my goals for this year. Less cartoony.
 I will be shrinking the cat so that she's smaller than the dog. The dog may get a little bigger.
I'll experiment with moving the cat more to the right to strengthen the pyramid composition.
If you see anything else to comment on let me know.

Fox with marshmallow

For this image I took the rough sketch from my sketchbook...

and placed it into an Adobe Illustrator file on it's own layer.

I set the scan to multiply.

Then I made a new layer underneath so that I could draw the fox and still see the rough art over the top of what I was drawing.

This is the result.

My original intention was to take this Illustrator image into Photoshop and add texture to it.

I played with it a little bit but didn't like the way it was going so I stopped.

The image looks a bit unbalanced to me. I think it could use something down at the bottom left to strengthen the pyramid composition.

I am considering adding his bag of marshmallows on the ground or maybe a small critter who is sharing his disappointment. I'm not sure yet.

Opinions are welcome.

5 eyed monster

Here's the latest inked piece of art.

This was originally drawn in my sketchbook for Illustration Friday.

My goal was to draw 3 monsters that read as one monster until you started to really look at the drawing.

I think this one would be better with some color.

The monsters are very white. I didn't want to get too heavy with the fur. I was concerned it would become hard to read.

I used a combination of tech pen and brush and ink on bristol board.

I have started sketching some ideas for new art....

My wife has said that I am making too many complicated/detailed drawings lately.

I should do some simpler art. "People ooh and aah over it."

I can see what she means, so I am sketching up some simpler ideas to work on.

Here are a few that I sketched out yesterday.

This one is to add more people to my samples.

The girl is outside giving a letter to the mail bird to deliver.

I think I'll do this one in Black & White and also in Color.

This one was inspired by one of Aesop's Fables, The Fox and the Grapes.

I believe this one will also be in Black & White and also Color.

This one is the simplest of the 3.

He's just a dressed up fox holding something.

He was inspired by the art in the Fable book.

I believe I will "ink" this one in Adobe Illustrator. And then do a color version using Illustrator also and then take it into Photoshop to play around with texturing it.

These art the last two inked images from the circus story.

I don't believe I'll ink the whole story. These were meant to show a single character drawn in several different images. Portfolio pieces for children's book publishers.

The first one is the boy swallowed up by a snake.

The second is a visit with the circus monkeys.

Both were drawn with a mix of pen, brush , and ink.

MeMonday1/25/10

This is todays self portrait.

I drew this one in my sketchbook using pencil and brush & ink.

Time: 20 - 30 min.

I realized the other day that drawing these on Monday morning, or any other morning, doesn't show me "at my best. But I like the results so far.

For todays drawing I decided in advance that it would be drawn with brush and ink.

I'm working on my control of the brush.

3 birds inked

I finished the inking on the 3 birds. This is the final art.

Let me know what you think.

New inks

These are a couple of pieces that I started yesterday.

This one is a circus train being pulled by a clown car.

I'm wondering if it needs a background. Nothing fancy. Just a pattern or something.

If you have an opinion, let me know what you think.

This second one is still a w.i.p.

It's also a piece that was done in color previously.

I am changing it for inking. 

As you can see by the hat on the top bird I am planning on adding texture and pattern to the piece. I stopped here to scan it so that I can save this stage so I can print it out on paper and do some experimenting before committing to the final image.

I need to decide how to treat the sky and grass and I'm not sure what I want to do yet.

Again if you have any comments, let them fly.