Monster under the bed

Zaddison discovering Eek under her bed.

A map for the Trolls

This is the map Zaddison draws for the Trolls so they can find their way home.

They go past the mailbox, through the forest and then behind the cattails is...THE BRIDGE!

Trolls under the Bridge - touched up

This weekend I touched up the Trolls under the Bridge illustration I did a bit ago.

I added some shadows and wood grain texture to the tree and shaded in the clothes the Trolls are wearing.

Finished-ish Pages

These are the things I think I've decided:

1. The book will have a square layout.

2. I'll keep the illustrations in a sketchy style. I've been approaching drawing with an "I'm learning and will someday draw these pictures in an AMAZING way" attitude. But I think if I don't just get going with what I'm doing now then I'll pretty much never finish the book, especially not in time for Add's birthday.

3. I'll probably forgo doing any kind of watercoloring--mostly because I can't seem to get it to look right. I'm going to keep at trying to learn how to make watercolors do my bidding so hopefully in the next book I can do some more fancy-type illustrations.

Here are the 2 finished-ish pages that I have done. I'm not 100% sure what type of font to use. I like font the bottom page because it looks a bit more handwritten and might go a bit better with the sketchy-ness of the illustrations. But I also think it might come off a bit gimmicky?

Likewise I think the font on the top page might come off too formal?

I'd love to hear any votes about the fonts :)

Into the Attic - touched up

This is the third draft of the illustration of Zaddison getting into the attic.

I liked your suggestion Pubby (that's my brother (fyi)) of keeping the plant stacked on a chair.

Looking at it now, I think I need to clean up the chair a bit more so it can fit better with the style the plant and Zaddison are drawn in.

Around the corner & under the stairs

Hooray! This weekend I got a lot of work done on the book :) I put together some rough drafts of the actual pages and it's really motivating to be able to start narrowing down the to-do list.

With Addison's birthday coming up in April, I figure I need to kick my dedication up several notches so I can have it done in time.

So these images will be together in a 2 page spread. Zaddison peeking around the corner will be on the left page (probably in the bottom right corner of the page) and the Trolls in the shadows under the stairs will be on the right page.

I tweaked this stair picture from a previous sketch. I think it works better without all the details I had in the other drafts that distract from the Trolls.

Sleepy time

After Zads discovers Eek under her bed and realizes that he was just waiting there for a friend, the adventure of exploring the dark will end with them falling asleep together.

Trolls under the bridge in watercolor

This weekend I printed this troll sketch on our newfancy-pantsy printer and was excited to find that the ink doesn't smudge with water. Now I can practice painting without having to go through the trouble of tracing the sketch onto watercolor paper :D

I'm really proud of how the tree turned out but I'm not sold on the colors for the trolls and overall the colors are much too "springy" to go with the spooky feel I want the book to have. Next time I'll tone down the colors to be more autumn-y and see how that looks.

Trolls under the bridge

This is the bridge where the Trolls were headed until getting lost under Zaddison's stair case.

I'll be trying my hand at watercoloring this guy sometime soon.

Hearing the Bats in the Attic

Sad Eek

Opening the attic door - revised

I wasn't 100% happy with the way the plant and chair looked in my first go on this picture.

So I drew a new plant and table I liked better and cheated a bit by using photoshop to place them into the scene.

Zaddison & The Mysterious Dark cover

A first stab at a cover for the book.

Meeting Doodles

Every quarter at work we have a meeting that lasts all day from 8:30 to around 4:30. These are the doodles that resulted from asking so much from my attention span.

8 hours was long enough to plan out what I want to have happen on each page of the book with little thumbnail images, these will be refined as I get new ideas while writing and drawing out the story.

Opening the attic door

I was originally thinking that the story would start off with Zaddison hearing spooky sounds while she was going to sleep and then in the morning she'd have some kind of conversation with her mom after which she would decide to go find out what was making the sounds she heard in the dark.

But then I realized that exploring the dark is neither brave nor scary during the day. So the new plan is for her mom to tuck her in and say goodnight and then Zaddison will go exploring after each noise she hears, starting with the bats in the attic who are waking up and about to go out to their nightly feast.

Trolls (who got lost under the stairs)

Meet the Trolls who got lost on their way to a bridge and are currently living under the stairs in Zaddison's house.

I had a hard time figuring out how I wanted to draw these guys and they went through several incarnations before getting some inspiration from an unfortunate looking baby we see at church who we've dubbed "Goblin Baby."

Watercolors

These are my first experiments with the watercolors Jon gave me for Christmas.

I was hoping to channel some of my dad's painting skills but working with watercolors was a bit harder than I was hoping it would be. I think with a few more weekends I can figure out what colors I want all the characters to have and then focus on how exactly to go about painting them.

Getting back into the swing of things

It's been a looong time since I posted anything and it's with much happiness that I declare my blog officially back in business. Jon gave me a sketchbook and a beautiful set of watercolors for Christmas (my first experiment with those is soon to follow) and New Year's weekend was happily spent drawing and working over the story.

These are my 'let's remember how to draw' sketches.