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Something for Illustration Friday and the word prompt “kernel”.

Each drawing is a learning experience, in this case, how to personify a wheat kernel…a PENSIVE wheat kernel, at that. And then how I might, in general, go about illustrating this little mention of wheat in one of Jesus’ parables. Should I put legs on the kernel..? Should I show a whole wheat field verses one stalk..? The simpler the better, I think.

Since I was looking at  images of wheat kernels via Google, I also saw a number of photos of foods using whole wheat or the grain of a particular wheat.  I love bread–and all kinds of baked goods. And seeing photos of  these and these Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies made my moment. Yum.

]]> http://paulabecker.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=3478 5 http://paulabecker.com/blog/?p=3463#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://paulabecker.com/blog/?p=3463#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 15:52:55 +0000
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Paula
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http://paulabecker.com/blog/?p=3463 I love doing spreads like this for my clients! It’s like a puzzle within a puzzle for me, to work out the fun activities for the kiddos to interact with! I took a photo this time, but have the art specs from the AD, my rough, and some pull-outs from the final to show you. The designer made a good call to drop the color background on the pavement in the end. It really made the game pop out!

Below: specs from designer.

Below: my rough.

Below: my final.

Below: some pull-outs.

(c) Owlkids

Thank you, Chirp!

Below is an illustration where I played around with type and a painterly style.

There’s a lot of leaping and jumping around here! Just a little drawing for Illustration Friday’s prompt “Jump”.

JUMP!!!

(c) Highlights For Children

This week, the Illustration Friday word prompt is “Heights”. I was doing some illustrations of frogs a few weeks ago and I guess still have residual “frog” on the brain. Nothing clever here; just frogs leaping. Check out the height of that leap!

And be sure and check out the other Illustration Friday submissions. It’s great to see such creativity abound!

Illustration For Kids is a group of 7 illustrator gal-pals (one of them being me : ) who together promote and encourage each other in the illustration biz.

Our theme was “Spring Rain”. Each of us went to work creating our own interpretation of this theme. An enlarged version of my spot is below.

It really took me a good while to create this final piece. It went through many variations, but even before that, I had tried multiple ideas. Some of those ideas are below. It gave me an opportunity to play with my looser, painterly style, and figure out what character I wanted to use, whether a human or animal.

And then…I thought I got to my final piece (below). I worked on various editions of this girl walking her dog in the rain, and it was all ready to go.

Then a number of days later, I decided to try another idea. And that led to the NEW final piece. Some samples of the progression of the final art is below.

In the end, the little girl ended up with a red rain outfit, and the rainbow got switched to a different position at the last minute. Sometimes it takes a lot of time and all kinds of different ideas to get the FINAL final, right? Right!

An Illustration Friday submission for the word “return”.  Duck is all nice and tanned from his stay in the sunny south!

An excuse to draw an alligator…who tends to live in a swamp. This one’s having a hard time getting a phone signal. You know how swamps can be.

Refreshing part of an old drawing as a warm-up exercise.

Playing around with my style and lettering for Illustration Friday.

Below is the final spread. I knew the AD planned to drop it on a color background so I had to think about that.

Below: The first round of roughs I sent of the kids with NO instruments! Not sure what I was (or wasn’t thinking) at this point. I was more concerned with how I wanted to show the kid-conductor and the orchestra. I think I thought I was doing a choir. Silly me.

Below: After the AD kindly pointed out the need for instruments and notes, I went back and reworked it. Much better, yes?

Below: The above rough was approved and I didn’t deviate much from the rough. Only a few changes to the kids and cleaned it up. But I wanted the line work to be loose and easy and not over-worked, which I think I achieved. It’s usually something I feel inside me as other people can never tell when I over-work a project.  My thanks again to Cindy for the project, her patience and the fine job she does/did with the magazine!

To see other Illustration Friday ideas, click here.

Highlights is the only magazine (rather, publishing company) I know of that expresses such great appreciation like they do to illustration, illustrators, and the illustrators that they contract. These platters and letters are just a part of their way of conveying the value they have for illustrators. The party they throw each year is amazing (I attended two years ago. Wow!), not to mention the relationship they build with their contractors. It’s got a family-feel to it all.

So thank you, Christine, Cynthia, Kelley and staff, for choosing me for the month of February! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you guys, too!

And, below, is the spread that they are talking about…”The Champion Of Quiet”, a cute story written by Tracy Stewart.

Below: A pull-out of the first spot from the spread.

And then back in the cartoon style:

My quickie of a contribution to this week’s Illustration Friday prompt: “capable”. Be sure and check out the other fabulous entries at Illustration Friday!

Just a real quick little pink bear-guy to remember the day.