Children's Book Idea & Process

17 x 24 in. Acrylic & Oil on Panel. 2010

After a couple hours of working up from the darkest

darks to my lights, I ended up with this.

After adding halftones, I painted in the darkest darks

Added halftones of Cad. Red & Ivory Black to

see how far back or how close I wanted the

characters to be seen. I should've pushed the

bottom guy back a bit. =(

Wash of Cad. Yellow to help me see

the overall atmosphere of the painting.

Line Drawing =D

For my Design 2 class with Cole Case (possibly the most hilarious Art Center teacher out there), we had to come up with an image based on analogous colors + black & white. My weapons consisted of Cadmium Yellow, Orange, and Red. I had a blast working on this because there were no requirments for the size of the illustration nor theme. So I chose my "Swing Kids" as my muse. At first I came up with a sketch portraying a figure ground type composition with a full swing sit smacked in the middle of my painting surface. But eh, I thought that was boring and decided the crop the hell out of it and came up with what I have pictured above. Each stage of this painting was photographed from the drawing to the finished product.

By the time I got done with this painting, it seemed like a good idea to try and incorporate it into a children's book. It's in the works!!!