I’ve been slowly working on a children’s book about things that can be found in the forests of the Pennsylvania/ New Jersey area.
It’s been a slow crawl, mostly because halfway through it I decided to start over with my illustrations, even after I spent over fifty hours on the preliminary pen sketches and first few watercolors.
I just can’t keep working on something if I think the delivery could be better.
Of course, I didn’t throw away the preliminary pen sketches and watercolors.
Here’s a sketch of the page on Morel mushrooms
Then I have a partially finished watercolor drawing of an IO Moth. I’m still hung up on the wording of this page; I’m trying to keep each page to one sentence. This isn’t intended to be a technical field guide, but really a quiet time book with a foray into native wildlife facts. All of the drawings, while somewhat fantastic, are pretty accurate to the colors and marking of the species.
And probably my favorite so far is a drawing about the hearing capabilities of wild rabbits. I gave it to a friend as a going-away gift; we both love Watership Down and while this wasn’t an intentional portrait of Hazel, or Fiver (I can’t decide, between the two, who it illustrates best), it reminded me of the story’s imagery and magic. She’s the only person I’ve ever met that has passages memorized.
I’ll post more illustrations as the project picks up again. If I get a publisher, well, that always helps move things along.
Your illustrations are wonderful. I also love Watership Down and I thought of it when I saw the rabbit drawing, even before I read your post!
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Nancy,
That’s great! I’m happy that the association is apparent π and thank you so much for the compliments, I appreciate your words!
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I love your style! What do you use to line your watercolor paintings?
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Elaine,
Thank you so much! And thanks for taking the time to say something positive π I’m not totally sure what you mean by “line” (sorry, I get confused easily), but I mask off the edges with regular masking tape. For materials, I use watercolor, guache and Micron pens. I hope that answers your question!
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So much talent!
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Thank you!
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[…] I have a new print available, 3 Baby Robins, which is an illustration for my forest life book project. This drawing is what I consider to be a study for that project, and it’s one of my favorites […]
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