Make like a baby and head out!

Crude joke that always made me laugh as a kid. But it's so appropriate for this post. I FEEL like a baby with lots of the processes, whether it's playing with Photoshop or learning the various social media (something a creative artist needs to do in order to get their work out). There was a time to say anything about my art or writing was to be considered "arrogant, and full of myself" but how do people know to support you, unless you share that with them, so I'm now in the uncomfortable mode of figuring out how to share my work without being too full of myself, because it's always been a bit of an "either or" for me. Anyhow, now that I'm beginning to blog consistently, I'd been brainstorming how to increase content. (one idea is asking some of my writing and illustrating friends about their process or studio-- something I'm nosy about, as well as likes, what do you think? Are you nosy about that stuff to? If so I want to think up some of the less asked questions and those that wouldn't take a long time or thought to respond to as most are very busy!). One idea was to take some of the things my friends love and have photos of, as well as my interests and combine them for my coloring pages. This week will be my daughter's love of sloths and my friend Nadine Hays photos from where she lives (she's the author of Happier Than a Billionaire). Next week is either turtles or horses, that kind of thing.

Anyhow, I'd promised to change the header out every few months, and wanted to keep that promise. It forces me to create new content, and means I'm practicing at becoming quicker at producing finished art. The wonderful class that I'm taking from the School of Visual Storytelling is winding down, and this is one of the assignments (way to go! three tiered multitasking!), though I added the book, because it fits the storyline of a distracted protag and my blog.

So a little bit of the process:

Now if I wasn't under a time constraint, what I should have done is a FEW versions of this. I could have made the silhouettes of the dog and perhaps the girl's face a little stronger, and that may have had a better impact. But I set the time limit on the header pieces at 5-7 hours. The first few may end up being rough, but I hope and suspect they will get better as I do more.  When I used to work with colored pencils I worked in a grisaille fashion. That's laying the values in then laying the color on top. I work that way in Photoshop as well:

I'm trying more and more to lay the color in properly. Part of the problem is my programs aren't properly loaded, and the old computer I'm working on won't let me uninstall and reinstall anything, and it's not mine. This may or may not become a moot point next week, if MY old computer is fixed. But for now, one really shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Next came the color. I'd been thinking of the spread for Annie I'm working on and will blog when it's finished, probably part one this week, the second part next week as I'll be redoing it to see if what I see in my head, I've figured how to render it) and thought I'd see if I could make it work in this piece. I could not. Hence next weeks's post and redo...

I could see room for improvements, and will make those changes and change out the bottom part of my banner to reflect the new character of the piece, as well as the fact that I write AND illustrate, though I'm tending to concentrate on the art process for now in my blogging. Expect to put it up sometimes today, either before or after my last heartbreaking class with Will and Jake. It was such a wonderful thing. I learned a great deal from the process, some of which most definitely will follow through in my work...

Check out my new header! And notice my new logo! A suggestion from Jake Parker, which I think is a great one, as I do a few different things. I had fun!