Daniel decided to set up an easel for his mommy so he could get some art work done during the day.  He also lets her use his large waffle blocks as make shift studio tables.  What a sweet boy.

Eric’s also really sweet.  He bought me that easel for our anniversary. I love it!  And I love him too.

There a few steps you should generally follow when creating an illustration: 

• 1) form a concept
• 2) Brainstorm with at least 20 thumbnail sketches
• 3) do a grayscale study to determine value patterns
• 4) do a quick color study/create a color pallet
• 5) gather the reference you need (photos, models, objects etc.)
• 6) do a detailed drawing
• 7) proceed to the finished piece!

Following all or even most of these steps makes art faster, easier and better in the end.  I however, have the terrible habit of skipping from step one straight to to the last two steps.  I just can’t wait to get to the delicious details!

True to character, when I thought my portrait of Sala was turning out pretty well I decided to turn it into a finished piece without knowing what sort of picture I wanted it to be. I skipped planning and started playing.

I finished painted Sala’s dress then added a quick shield and stuck in some photo reference of lilies. I didn’t care for the shield so I didn’t bother finishing it but I loved the lilies so I painting some of my own…and then didn’t include them in the final piece because I eventually cropped off the whole bottom of the picture and changed my concept entirely.

Instead I decided to paint Sala with a little pet dragon. I tried several different styles of dragon. Then I thought it’d be nice to have a lantern, and then I thought the picture would look better with a background, and the background needed a landscape in it’s background and finally, after a lot of muddling, I came up with a finished piece.  It probably took five times as long as it would have if I had drawn it out by hand to begin with, but I had a lot of fun creating it and learned a lot about art and Photoshop in the process.

I owe a special thanks to my wonderful husband Eric for offering helpful suggestions whenever I was at a loss.  Here is some advice he gave me for the background.  I especially liked the penguin, but unfortunately it didn’t make it into the final piece.