Mr Sleepyhead pages 1 & 2

 

Mr Sleepyhead - Page 2

Page 2, with some more added elements - the pictures and the wallpaper.
Not sure yet if I will add other elements?

Page 1 concept picture

The  above teddy bear image with pillow - an idea for the first page. The image was created using 'Retro supply' brushes, Risograph.
The Risograph brushes create some beautiful textures. To see more, check them out here. Totally recommend.

Page 1 & 2 concept ideas

The above are just some experiments to see what the first two pages would look like. I will keep experimenting some more till I arrive at something that looks right.
I may even do away with the teddy bear image completely, and just have the text.

As always, thanks for visiting. 
Hopefully post up some more soon. Take care.

A daughters creativity

Indiana drawing

Todays attitude of gratitude, Pt 4, a daughters creativity.

Just recently my daughter expressed her love to draw. I felt very proud, but more so that she has found a great gift in this life, that of creativity.

I hope she finds the same joy, freedom to express, and to overcome challenges that come with finding your voice as I have, and my wife too, through creativity.

Love you Junebug

Mr Sleepyhead - Rendered page 1

 

Rendered Mr Sleepyhead and with some elements for page 1

Continuing on from the previous post, now a step closer to a rendered bear and some background elements, for page 1.

An observation I have made regarding color, from the classic Golden Books is the use of neutral colorings. Neutral maybe also meaning natural colors - which seem to be 'earthly', muted, and less on the fully saturated scale. Not to say that more saturated colors weren't used in the classics, but that they were used sparingly.

I know that there is a hierarchy in this, to control where emphasis is best placed on images.
So much to learn with color. But loving it, all the same.

Mr Sleephyead - values

Image of value range for rendered image. This helps to check that the image reads well, with enough contrast between values. And hopefully not to muddy in the process either.

Some elements for page 1 - close ups

Just some close up shots of elements that are populating the first page.
I have really enjoyed playing with texture and color to achieve a look which hopefully will work well with Mr Sleepyhead.

As always, thank you for visiting. Take care

Mr Sleepyhead - Character painting

Rendering with inked outlines

The decision visually was to not have any outlines for the character, and of his background. My reasoning behind this is to create a softer look.

This has been a complete shift for me artistically, as much of my art work is outlined in ink.

For this book, I really want the story to feel welcoming, warm and cosy. 

The idea behind the book is about a bear going to a place of comfort and rest, his bed. And of the routines to slow down, close your eyes, and sleep.

 

Hopefully I have captured that cosy-welcoming feeling in these below images.

 

Rendering without inked lines

Rendering close ups

As always, thank you for visiting. I hope to post up soon the completed painting of Mr Sleepyhead, the bear.

Mr Sleepyhead - Make Over

Maurice Sendak bear study

Mr Sleepyhead bear, I felt, wasn't doing it for me (visually). And this was confirmed further when I stumbled across a recent bear drawn by Maurice Sendak. After doing the sketch of the Sendak bear, I realised that my bear head needed to be more square-like.

So, out with the old head, and in with a newer variation.

Mr Sleepyhead version 2

Mr Sleepyhead - rough color flats

As always, thanks for visiting. Take care.

Maurice Sendak Tribute

 

Maurice Sendak Tribute illustration

Only recently did I discover the brilliance of Maurice Sendak.

I was familiar with ‘Where the Wild things Are’ and can remember as a younger child seeing those fantastical monsters, and of Max in his wolf suit. But now that have I delved into his other works, and much to my delight, many books on the man himself – I have come to find a creator that I very much admire. And now often look to, for words of wisdom, wit, and wonder, as a child might.

What is it that I find most magical about Mr. Sendak’s creativity?

Word play

There is a rhythm of words, that as you read, are fun to speak. To hear also. They sound magical. Maurice had this gift. Here’s one example, from ‘In the Night Kitchen’.

‘Where the bakers who bake till the dawn so we can have cake in the morn mixed Mickey in batter, chanting: Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter! Stir it! Scrape it! Make it! Bake it!
And they put that batter up to bake a delicious Mickey-Cake’.

It just has such a great lively tempo. And you also understand what is happening. No easy feat, I am sure.
Ok, another example, from of course ‘Where the Wild things are’.

‘But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go – we’ll eat you up – we love you so!”
And Max said, “No!”
The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth
and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws
but Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye’.

Playful illustration

The tempo of text also resonates with his pictures. On the one hand, the pictures are fully grounded, in a world we could grasp. A kitchen, a bedroom, at your aunties house. Yet the characters lived vivaciously through their actions, and imaginings too.  Fully - animated.
Like Mickey, flying high in a plane made of dough for ‘In the Night Kitchen’. Max, and his rumpus of wild things baying at the moon and swinging through trees.
The child in me just loves these illustrations, teased to see what next will happen. So full of wonder. Maybe a little scary too.

And this is why I think the text and images of Maurice Sendak’s picture books work so well. The movement, both in text and illustration, melded together, yet working independently to create this culminative delight, a wonderous story. Worth re-reading, many-many times over.

So, in closing, my humble offering, to a great man, now gone.

Thank you, Maurice Sendak, for your boundless pursuit and deliverance, of stories so wonderfully made. Timeless. Universal. For the children in all of us. To ponder fourth with curiosity and an insatiable delight, for life.

Maurice Sendak, Age 83, 8^th May 2012 

The above illustration I created in Sketchbook (desktop version), then rendered with the additional text in Adobe Photoshop.

I will post up again soon some conceptual sketches in preparation for my tribute to Mr Sendak, soon.

As always, thanks for visiting. Have a great day/night, wherever you are..."and now", cried Max, "Let the wild rumpus start".

Snuggly Monster

 Part 3, Attitude with Gratitude

My daughter made this very cool, snuggly monster. And it also smells great, peach at the top and strawberry at the bottom.

Very grateful for school holiday programs.

Mrs Snuggly monster also climbed a tree with my daughter, our favourite tree. Just around the road from where we are living. Grateful for trees. Aren't they the best.

Take care, thank you for visiting.

Mr Sleepyhead - Color study

 

Mr Sleepyhead - color inspiration

A color inspiration for my children's book, a color palette taken from Golden book ‘Duck and his friends’, illustrations by Richard Scarry.
I eye dropped color samples from image, and did a very basic color lay-up, in Photoshop.  I found this very useful as it eliminates unnecessary details and, in this example, helped me to see relationships between colors.

Mr Sleepyhead - color version 1

With my chosen first page, I did a quick color mock-up, based roughly on the colors from ‘Duck and his friends’.
Done in Photoshop, just flat colors, no shading.
I also did a black and white preview of image, just to check that the different elements are contrasting nicely. Hopefully no muddy colors.

Mr Sleepyhead color variations

From there, I used a great little online tool called ‘brandmark’. This quickly generates many color variations based on your uploaded image.
There were some nice examples generated of which I wouldn’t have even thought of trying.
Find link here. Definitely recommend this great online tool.

I changed the hand (reaching for clock) of Mr Sleepyhead (see previous post for example). My wife commented that it looked a bit too cartooney – which I agree. 

More to come soon. Thanks as always for visiting 

Change in seasons, Lego and a Bug

 

ATTITUDE WITH GRATITUDE, No.2

With a change in seasons, it is still nice to get outside before the coming winter. So, climbing a tree, one of Indi’s favourite things to do at the park, a must do activity before dinner. Saw this strange – magical looking insect too, on one of the tree branches. Brave enough to touch it as well!!!

Never too young, or old, to start Lego, for all of us. So much fun. Very grateful for Lego instructions. 

In the pursuit of recording moments like these, we have put an A3 sheet of paper on our lounge wall, and attached images, labels, anything - that reminds us of what we are grateful for. To remind us, look, what beautiful things there are, all around.

Hope to post up soon some more content for Mr Sleepyhead, my childrens book.

Thanks for visiting. Take care. 

Mr Sleepyhead - Roughing it

 

Some thumbnails, on post-it notes, nice, rough and small enough to get the ideas flowing quickly.

Chose one of the rough thumbs, refined it (at a bigger size). 

Inspiration also came from some classic Golden books, to get ideas of objects that would populate Mr Sleepyheads world.

Not necessarily related to my story, this sketch was just to explore Mr Sleepyhead in a different environment. Also to work out how his body shape works, sitting down :)

 

More to come soon, refining that chosen rough further with some color ideas thrown into the mix.

Mr Sleepyhead

Mr Sleepyhead rough concepts

After completing a 32 page picture book for a competition in 2020, I had decided to do a smaller children's book in page number count. The main reason, that I would have a quicker turnaround time to complete the book. 

 

Therefore this book will be 13 pages of an actual story. This doesn't include things like the title page, dedication page and other pages that will need to be added.

 

I won't go into the story at this stage other than to say, its to do with a sleepy bear who needs to go to bed.

Mr Sleepyhead - Concept 1

There is only one main character, a bear.

I saw him as a classic looking bear. The look of the bear was derived from my extensive collection of pre-loved books, from such great illustrators as JP Miller, Mary Blair and Maurice Sendak. 

Research ideas for Mr Sleepyhead

Concept 1 model

Hope to put up some more for Mr Sleepyhead soon :) Thanks for visiting.

A New Journey

In 2020, during the Pandemic, lots of things were down, the job market for one thing. Finance was tight. I am sure like a lot of people, it was an incredibly hard time. Out of work, countless submission's of CV's and cover letters later, I took some time out, to do a children's book challenge. At first it seemed counter-intuitive. What, do a month long book challenge whilst your out of work? What about the bills? Your family? These things weighed heavily on me. But, I had to do this challenge.

 

So what happened? A seed of change begun. I started to ask myself, what am I trying to say in my art? What do I really value? See, I have been doing fan art for years. And I really do love this stuff. But I was starting to question the longevity of it. How could I possibly entertain creating this type of art and make money from it? It wasn't my original art to sell, and it just didn't feel right to do so.

I was in a calder-sac, a dead end. I was lost.

 

Now on holiday, Christmas of 2020, with my beautiful wife and daughter, in Wellington. Just rocking around a mall, I happened to come across this pop-up second hand bookshop. The books are free. Crazy, right?  Shuffling through a stack of books, I came across one I hadn't seen in years.

Copyright Maurice Sendak

Where the Wild Things Are.

Sure it was tattered, had marks and dog-eared pages. But I didn't care. I loved this book. The story, the colors, the monsters. Max in his sailing boat. Pure bliss.

Here is where it started to make sense to me. Children's books. I have always loved Children's books.

Why had I not put two and two together? Slow learner I guess.

 

Fast forward to 2022, and my collection of Maurice Sendak books has grown. Also, I have now amassed quite a sizeable quantity of pre-loved classic children's books. Classics by the likes of Bill Peet, Dr Seuss, and Golden Books (mainly 1950's to 1970's), as examples. 

 

And, I have finally returned to the drawing board. Wanting to craft my own children's book.

 

In my next post, I will hope to update my tentative beginnings, of this adventure. 

I imagine that going forward, this blog will start to change too. Not sure what that means at the moment, but I do welcome the new journey.

Copyright Maurice Sendak

Apologies for the word count in this post.

Thank you for popping on in. Take care.

Attitude with Gratitude

 

Lately I have been trying to adopt an attitude of gratitude. 

To stop, observe, and take in things, which though may seem small, are actually amazing gifts.

Just this weekend past, I was having some daddy-time with my daughter, hanging out in the botanical gardens. 

Such a beautiful place.

And my daughter, so full of life. Adventurous, sassy, determined. And always up for a giggle. How lucky am I?

I am learning to be more grateful.

Indiana & Bear illustration

 

This was an image that I inked up from an initial inktober drawing I did, over the 30 day drawing challenge. I wanted to see how I could push an image in a direction that might 'inspire' a story, possibly.

I also wanted to explore how different color schemes can evoke different feelings for your characters. These above images are just some examples.

What follows below are three images, rendered slightly differently. 

I ended up choosing the 3rd image. 

To see my inkotober challenge, click here 

As always, thanks for visiting. Take care

Love that Vinyl

 

Something I try to do often, is listen to music, and specifically on my Crosley Coupe Turntable. There is something magical about the experience found whilst listening to vinyl. 

Thanks to my beautiful wife for finding this record player, its been such a treat.

Yogi Bear

 

This was a real chance for me to try out some new brushes in Photoshop and also veer away from my more outlined approach when creating character designs.

This was definitely a labour of love as I was pressed for time. Just doing little bits week by week until it was completed.

Thanks for visiting.

Yogi Bear T-Shirt

 

The one, the only, my beautiful daughter, Miss Indiana Grace Crawford. Along with Dad (Me), showcasing a recent Yogi Bear illustration I did, on a T-Shirt.

Will post close up of image soon.

Thanks for visiting