I've been slowly working on drawings and sketch composites for a children's book written by my father-in-law. I'm glad to get practice drawing, which is more difficult for me than painting. The story features a family that runs a small wildlife rescue shelter in the country. The protagonist is a ferret who narrates the first and last chapters.

The two little girls in the story help their pregnant mom with the animal care. Here are a few drawings I'm working on, one of the sisters bottle feeding an otter, and both girls helping their mom feed the birds:

I'm working on developing a family likeness between the two girls and their mother. It's been difficult getting good pictures of the sketches, since my lighting setup is optimized for paintings, and the sketches are much more sensitive to uneven light because of the white background. However, I just got a scanner for the drawings and I'm in the process of setting it up.

Tags: pregnant, girls, animals, otter, book

While I prefer traditional paint and canvas as my medium, I have learned that Photoshop is a powerful tool for trying out compositions and combining sketches. I'm working on illustrating a children's book that requires many complex scenes with a lot of characters and detail. I have drawn some small black and white character drawings which will be inserted into the text to capture individual moments and expressions. For each chapter, I plan to have a large painted scene which incorporates everyone. I am going for the storybook feel of this painting; not photo-realistic, but lots of details to examine. I loved large illustrations as a kid.

In this scene, the girls in the story are preparing to go outside to play in the yard. Their pregnant mom is cleaning the house and packing for a move. Queen Ferret, the central narrator and comic relief figure, is doing her best to cause trouble.

I started with these sketches (click on images to see larger versions):

I wanted the scene to be in a kitchen or hallway of a house, but I experimented with several backdrops before deciding on which to use.

To start, I found a photo of a kitchen that I liked, and an image of of a stack of moving boxes. I modified my sketch of the ferret pulling a sock out of a drawer into a drawing of her stealing something from an open box.

It was tricky finding a kitchen with the right perspective (from just under counter height, since the girls are sitting on the floor) but I eventually found one I liked and converted it into a grayscale sketch-type image using the Desaturate and Filter Gallery (Poster Edges) commands. I did the same thing to the stack of boxes and window image.

Next is the part I wish I had known when I did the glider painting, since perspective drawing has never been my strong suit. I took each of my sketches and cut out the backgrounds using the Magic Wand Tool, selecting the background and then inverting the selection to select the object only. I copied and pasted the images onto my kitchen image. Each pasted image went into a new layer. Next, I used the Free Transform command to scale, flip and rotate the pasted images into a composition that I liked. When I started, I wasn't sure if I would prefer to have the girls in the background or foreground, where to put the ferret, or how big each character should be in relation to the other. I shuffled the layers around to overlap the characters. Here's what I came up with as my painting mockup:

I extended the right edge and ceiling of the kitchen using the Clone Stamp tool on the background, and added a window showing the girls' backyard. I want to put a small detail into the backyard to tie into the story, but I haven't decided on one yet.

I think I liked this composition best because of the triangular layout that ties the characters together. The hillside in the window points down at the mother's face, her mop points towards the ferret, and the ferret faces the girls. The older sister's body angles back up at the mother.

As you can see, the goal is not to create an attractive drawing, but to experiment with composition in a quick and easy way prior to investing a lot if time. Had I been doing the composite sketch on paper, I would have had to erase and redraw each character every time I changed my mind. Now that I have my composite, I will transfer the basic lines to my canvas and paint it as a large full-color painting.

Tags: sketch, photoshop, combining photos, woman, girl, ferret, kitchen, indoors

This is another new landscape painting. I combined two photos to make a painting of an island in a lake in Ontario at sunset. Here's the finished painting:

These are the starting photos, one of the sky colors and one of the island:

Here's a closeup of the trees on the island:

I put in some subtle backlighting on the foliage to distinguish it from the dark land on the shore. I'm working on a video of the process.

Tags: ontario, lake, water, sunset, combining photos, finished

This is one of my new landscapes, which I named Light in the Desert. This is a painting of shadowed sand dunes under my classic night sky.

I like having multiple styles, and this one is definitely towards the surreal, abstract side. Here are some detail shots:

You can see the canvas texture in this one:

I've just posted this painting to my main print store, my Etsy store and my card store if you want to order a print.

Tags: night, sand, surreal, sky