Stitching Butterflies is Far from Finished

I completed the Stitching Butterflies book dummy... or so I thought.

Turns out there is a contest out there for illustrators not agented or published who are writing stories about diversity.

I'm entering of course! SB is all about two girls with diverse backgrounds, two different points of views and different interactions with the world. These interactions clash until they realize they are more similar they than thought.

Do I think I'll win? No, I don't, but I'm sure going to make sure that I try my very best and I make SB the best I can make it.

 These three images never seem to go away
or be completed. I want to make them perfect
but I need to move on (I need 6 completed pages!) So my next three I must do in a short amount of time. Everything MUST look SPLENDID, fantastic, it's gotta be a like a delicious cake where all the ingredients as a whole make people want to consume my cake. This is the next one I'm completing. I hope I can do this fairly quickly!

And in other news, I'm trying to complete a book dummy for Hello Robot by completing Dani Duck's book dummy challenge. Oh yeah, it's also INKTOBER and next month NaNoWriMo and the last Tomi competition is due in December.

I have a lot of projects...THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR.

Completed 2nd Draft of Book Dummy

Drum roll please...

*DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUUUU*

*PSHEEEE!* SMASH!

Okay, got too excited. I've never thought of how to write the sound of a drum roll...

Anyway, the 2nd draft of Stitching Butterflies book dummy is complete! Does it need tweaking still? Oh yes. Definitely, but I'm not going to let the incompleteness of a book dummy get me down. In fact it's better to not have fully fleshed out details sometimes with a book dummy. Fully prepared manuscript? Yes. Full, completed illustrations? Yes, but not the dummy. The agent or publisher might think you don't intend to change anything which isn't so as many things should be changed in the process.

Alright, so long SB for a little while! I've gotta start working on Lues and Sues. 

Book Dummy Update

Another post on this, really? Will I ever finish this thing? (HAHAHAHA...ha)

Anyway, the book dummy saga continues. I'm nearing the end of my second SB draft with it being critiqued (with most of the ones critiquing being confused) and have to say that my type of writing is very comic book-esque as a lot of the time I use only dialogue and onomatopoeia.

I don't want to change because the manuscript is a little confusing without the illustrations!

So for me this dummy is extremely important for Stitching Butterflies. I wrote about it on the wordpress. You can find some helpful links in there, as well as here and here. In fact, subscribing to these blogs help too.

Some pieces! Part of the reason this blog exists lies in the idea that an artist has to fail over and over and over again just to get what they want inside their heads on paper.  Still, that may not even happen.

Can I get what I want SB to be on paper? 

The Last Post was a Lie, ALL LIES

I need to step back a bit; perspective challenge will be started AFTER my book dummy.

I wanted to do this kinda challenge to myself and then I realized I was already getting buried alive by projects. Look at this list man!:

1. Stitching butterflies- I have the manuscript getting critiqued this week or the next, plus I have to re-draw the book dummy AND still have to finish Stella's illustration. 
2. Lues and Sues- yep, wrote another manuscript and now editing it. I wrote this one called Lue's Place, but it was missing serval things. I put it away for a year and one day I work I was suddenly writing a rhyme on a piece of scrap drawdown paper that began Lues and Sues. Oi.
3. Nightlander Oil Painting- and nightlander in general as it is an on going novel/comic that is now getting oil paintings because I wan to do a comic in oils and oh boy oh boy, JUST KEEP ON ADDIND TO THE PILE.
4. Critique group- I'm in a new critique group and we critique one manuscript a week.
5. Blogs/monday reviews- I'm writing a PB review every monday on my wordpress, which means it'll take the entire week to write unless I do everything last minute and pull an old review out. Oi. 
6. With Friends Like Us- Oh yes, another PB manuscript. WHY. You know, I have the notebook to write ideas down, it's just when a story pops up into my head it takes over.
7. Oh Yeah, Hello Robot is another PB- oh well, this is my life.
8. ANNND Work, the day job as quality control for inks, no need to elaborate this is takes time out of the day.

I should complete AT LEAST Stitching Butterflies before adding another project. Maybe I can edit Lues and Sues/start illustrating while SB is getting critiqued. 

I'm pretty sure this happens to illustrators/writers all the time though. I know an oil painter tends to start five oils paintings and complete them as they go. Same idea with stories. 

They're all jumbled. 

Just Looking Back...

Looking back at SB, remembering that I've been working on this picture book for little over a year, I see a dramatic change in the character design for Lily.

Here's how the first two characters began:

The change begins here. I just had this vision of adorable little girl with pigtails trailing behind her as she creates her dreams. Lily is a wilder character than Stella who likes things neat, a bit orderly, and pretty. 

I have a feeling that SB will go through more change as I get closer to finishing. I've also posted this change on my wordpress because it makes me wonder how many changes the books I'm studying went through. 

Book Dummy update!!!

Working on Stella piece. I'M MOVING SLUG PACE ON THIS ONE.
At least I'm moving, even if it's slow. Perhaps I'm moving so sluggity slug slow because I'm trying to match the previous Lily piece and making sure that everything is consistent.

I still could get a move on it though...

Another positive thing about yesterday was I kinda figured out the last page spread of the dummy here.

Still needs a WHOLE HECK OF A LOT OF WORK (the perspective of those buildings are god awful) but it is better than what I had before!

Moral of story...eh, PROGRESS and maybe slow and steady wins the race?

Just an update on digital color sketch

Digital color sketch! okay, so I figured a lot out but I still think there are some things that need fleshing out with the composition. I shall draw it again.

Finally Working on the Last SB Illustration

I'm finally doing it. This last illustration will hopefully be finished next week (HA RIGHT?!) and maybe I can move on to having the manuscript critiqued and the dummy fleshed out by the end of the month so I can work on Lue's and Sue's. Welp, here I go.

I'm about to do a digital color sketch. @_@ there will be pink, lots and lots of pink.

More Nightlander Update...and Now I have a Word Press

I have a wordpress now yaaay. My internet is acting funny so perhaps the menu is a bit off at this time but... I can fix it.

I decided to go with a wordpress for research purposes. I used to use blogger for this, but Draw it Again has become just that, me drawing and painting things over and over again, my long process of failure. So hopefully I can organize all research material on this blog (HOPEFULLY.)

In other news, Nightlander has been developing as I've procrastinated on SB (shame!) and now has more content and character development. Is this normal for a PB illustrator/writer to jump between projects, even if it means to jump from a PB to a YA comic novel thing? I'll have to research that and put the information in the blog.

Anyway, peace!

I was NOT finished! (Am I ever really?)

After showing the Facebook critique group and going over it with friends and family, then going back to a critique group, I came up with this:

final before 

final after

The very first reaction was that the colors were lovely, but very dim. I needed to brighten the whole composition (and ultimately I agree with this move, however I now need to go back to the first illustration to make sure everything is consistent) The second reaction what that most people could not see the "Stitch stitch stitch" which is what I was afraid of. I still need to clean up those "stitches" a bit before calling it a final. 

Lesson: If you think your illustration is finished, it's probably not finished. 

Second Illustration COMPLETE (I think)

I truly believe that my process could be a lot easier if I tried. This next piece took about a dozen sketches and re draws and tears (haha) to make. 

The biggest problem that I've had for a long time is tone/shading and clarity. Perhaps I'm an abstract artist at heart, but rarely is abstraction acceptable in illustration...especially if that abstraction was meant to be a hand or something or other important detail that needs clarification.  To fix this issue, I began to determine tone in photoshop by scanning my drawing in (after sketching out the darks and lights in thumbnails @_@) and just going through with photoshop paint. After that, to help with color (which sometimes I'll get too many layers and forget that this is acrylic and NOT oil paints) I just plop in the color to determine where things are placed, and gain more clarification.

Then comes the re-draw yay! I figure out what I enjoyed most of about the sketch, then draw the final. The acrylic layer is then painted on for texture purposes (and for patience purposes as working with acrylics can be annoying sometimes, but I suppose thats what happens when working with a plastic paint, not nearly as flexible as oils or digital) as I like painted textures with a strong color and found the combo to be fairly interesting. Prints way better too! And quicker! Joy.

In the middle of making this, I realized in my sketch I didn't see the gutter problem with the dandelion and the first "stitch" sooooooo... had to fix it. 

I did.

And here it is.

Perhaps I'll add the words on here later tonight, but this is the page spread! Another illustration complete for the dummy. I'll be making this one next!

AH I FAILED!

SO I failed the April 50,000 word challenge.

That's because I finished my Stitching Butterflies book dummy! YAY!

I'm still working on Nightlander like usual. It'll just be a long term project like I thought it was going to be. If you're interested just go here to see my progress, slow as it is. I supposed you can't write a YA novel/comic in a month (or at least I can't.)

After making my book dummy, I began a final illustration to go along with the dummy. This process was similar to my others: lots of  sketches, final sketch, acrylic painting, digital painting over acrylic, and I'll do a final acrylic after the digital. Here's the process:

Took me a week of frustration, but I got it eventually. Next final I'll do...

Why Didn't I do This?

Oh yeah, Lily's page goes first and that's how it would be read. OY!

New Everything Girl!

I finished it! Though I may go into photoshop to clean up that white on the right side. It does't look that bad in the original. 

Look at the difference in just two years! It's the main reason why I'm going back to this particular manuscript, to see the drastic change in drawing technique and character creation. I think I've cleaned up a bit during the years! Now it's just a matter of cleaning up more...that's why this blog is called "Draw it Again" I suppose~