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.