As my family recently got bigger I thought I should give a try to do something cute in order to develop my children’s book illustration side. It’s been a refreshing & peaceful process and the targeted audience has approved :)

One of the funniest part of my last illustration course was to sketch different type of moods. At the time I’ve been pleased with what I’ve ended up with; apparently too much as I never really spend time to give life to these sketches other than by dirty photoshoping them on the fly.

Finally, I’m getting back to it and this is the first of an eventual serie of five. The edge cut out appeared pretty much accidentaly after I’ve traced a rough mask to clean up the white page and change the background colour to emphasize the character. I wasn’t sure about it but it gives an interesting paper feeling remembering me a full of monkey children’s book I browsed during the course.

The original meeting between Nust the Dust and Doom the Broom but this time in colours!

Yesterday evening was the tenth and very last session of the course. We had the chance to expose the work we achieved during a showcase where friends and family were invited.I don’t feel like I want to write a lot about this right now – it’s late, I should sleep – but I’m glad to have completed my first ever course in illustration. Just the fact that, for the first time, I had proper hours to draw, has been a sort of revelation really. Last time I used to sketch a lot was when I was student… but during study hours, of course :) 

On top of that I’ve also rediscovered the pleasure of traditional drawing, playing with paper textures and various tools. Full digital illustration seems a bit flat now and I don’t even think about my poor Nintendo DS… Still needs Photoshop thought :)

This post is deconstructed but… Anyway it’s 3.30am and it’s all mine!!!

So, during this showcase we had to stick all our work on a huge black sheet of paper. The main piece of work was the final brief of the workshop. Several options were proposed, I choosed to work on opposites: Over/Under. As this was the last project, Dee asked the students to do it as polished as possible. I mean with colours and text, as a finished artwork really. I used the set of Caran d’Ache Supracolor my beloved offered me for my recent Birthday. I love these pencils. There are very very bold and the colours looks fantastic with a large range of hardness (Hope it means something, I’m still French sorry :)) Once the illustrations finished I’ve scanned them, adjusted tone and contrast, added the text in Photoshop and finally printed them on a nice paper. As my printer is A4 I had to shrinked down the drawings by 80% but it even looks better and crisper after that. I’ve been actually very impressed by the printed version. It really helped to make the colours pop out and, well, here they are:

I’ve also cleaned up, retouched and printed some of my previous illustrations:

For me this course as been a very good experience where I learned how to develop characters and ideas and use materials in a proper way. I’d like to thanks Dee Shulman for the great advices and feedback she gave to me and she’s been  truly brilliant as animating the classes in a cool and relaxed atmosphear. I really appreciated that especially on Friday evenings! She will do other workshops this summer and next December and yes, I highly recomment them!

For now I’m gonna try to carry on in producing illustration. Maybe not for childrens but I need to keep the productivity up and I want to, so this blog will be my witness.

An illustration I’ve done few weeks ago for an Illustration Friday theme but forgot to post in time. I think I’ve been influenced by my children illustration course but wanted to do something a bit darker than the usual “happy child/happy world” parents are looking for their childrens.

Following last week first session coverage, here’s what I’ve got from my third illustration classe. Tonight we had the opportunity to give a try at collage. It’s been messy but monsterly fun.After the pets (first session) and the childrens last week, Dee brought on the table another children’s favorite: Monsters. Using collage for monsters really make sense as monsters  are allowed to non-realistic shape and the bright paper’s colors helps these creatures to pop out of the sheet (Dee’s been scared several time tonight…).

I think I’ve done my last collage attempt when I was around 10 yo so I haven’t got to deal with too many habits and jump into it as a virgin if I can say! Really love it. I started with a round shape of what will be the main character and then started adding details to it. After a little while it was sort of ok but I was struggling to find a way to add fun to the composition.

I then realized that one of the few guy (mainly womens in the course) was hijacking elements of a newspaper in order to create his beast based on Gordon Ramsay. F***ing good idea! So I decided to add “realistic” elements to my monsters. I then retraced the shape of the characters with a fat black line to make everything more lively.

It was very interesting to see other people technics of collage. On the second part Dee did a critic’s round of everybody’s work. It was a bit exhausting physically but inspiring because of diversity of styles and Dee’s comments.

As a good pupil I’ve done my homework last week and continued the moods exploration. Here’s a quick montage of what I’ve ended up with:

2009 is starting “sur les chapeaux de roues” (warning, this is a French expression, litterally: on the tyres’ hats) professionnaly-wise as I’ve just spend 3 weeks 90% focused on deadlines and… deadlines! But fortunately my recently reanimated hobbies help me to refresh my brains when it gets too hot.

Since a couple of weeks I’ve started my first ever illustration course at City Lit in London. Each Friday, during 3 hours, the illustrator, Dee Shulman, is bringing a small group of people to understand and practice everything about children’s books illustration. After two sessions – and one missed, thanks to deadlines :) – I have to say: I love it!

As my new beginning in illustration is one of the reasons why I started this blog, it wouldn’t be fair not to post the work I’m doing during this course. So here is what I’ve done tonight during my second lesson:

The first half was about choosing one of the childrens pictures available on the table and getting inspired in order to sketch something related. I’ve been quite attracted by the expression on the face of a “no-happy little girl” and so I’ve ended up with this:

Second half was dedicated to how to express different moods. We got time to work on “happy”, “sad” and “surprised” and few others moods have been ordered as homework (yes, homework’s back!):

And in details:

Happy

Sad

Surprised (but looks frightened)

I’ll try to post about this course after each session until the end in March, so, even if I don’t get much time to post anything else, I’ll have a good excuse to do it once a week!

Oh, yes, paper is back…