Illustration: Read Across the Universe

It's Children's Book Week here in Australia, and the 2013 theme is Read Across the Universe so I created a colouring page specially for it. I liked the result and decided that it would make a fun portfolio piece, so I coloured it up into a full illustration:

You can grab the colouring page from the colouring page section of my website (which will also take you to a number of other colouring pages) or by clicking on the thumbnail below

As usual, I am providing high-quality colouring pages for private home or school use. Have lots of fun with them, but please don't use them commercially or distribute them without my logo and web address on. =)

Here's a progress animation of the creation of this piece: 

To start with I created some rough pose references in Manga Studio 5. I've just started using this programme and the 3D drawing references are very handy, especially when it means I don't have to try and recreate weightlessness while photographing a live model. 

Once I had my models roughly where I wanted, I drew right on top of them until I have a very rough sketch. 

I took this rough sketch into Photoshop, and refined it a bit before printing it out. 

Using my refined sketch as a guide I drew a tight pencil layout using pencil on layout paper.

I scanned this in and inked it digitally using photoshop. 

And then I coloured it, first laying down flat colours and then adding shading and colouring the linework. 

Adobe Photoshop CS6 with a Wacom Intuos 3

Illustrations: Baby Cards

Here are a couple of pictures I did for some baby cards. My cousin has just had her first baby, a gorgeous little girl called Mary, so I did a design for a card for her, and then one in the same vein to congratulate the new grandparents.

I wanted something a bit retro, so I looked to 50s artists, especially Retta Scott's Golden Book version of Disney's Cinderella. I used some sort of pastelly live brush in Photoshop to get the chalky texture. 

This card used the 1805 version of 'Rock-a-bye Baby' on the front and inside.

Rock-a-bye baby

Your cradle is green

Father's a nobleman

Mother's a Queen

Which seemed a bit less confronting than the usual version, especially for very new first-time parents! 

The Grandparents card was a bit of an afterthought. My mother wouldn't let me use the same illustration, and I had a lot of work on, so to speed things up I swiped the pram from some baby shower invitations I did last year and drew over that with my chalky brush, and altered the face of my original baby a bit. 

Adobe Photoshop CS6 with a Wacom Intuos 3. 

Needle felting: Mice

Contrary to appearances, I am not dead! There may have been times over the last month when I wished I was, because sometimes life/work/the world does that to us, but I've managed to survive July relatively unscathed and now that it's August I'm back with some felted mice.

I posted a sneak peek of this as part of a sketchdump back in May but only finished it recently. Back then there was just one mouse, but I always intended there to be three. I could probably go back and tighten up some areas, but I think it's time to call it done:

A shot with my hand, to show size.

And a rotation, because plump mouse bottoms need to be seen at every angle. =P

And finally a shot from above:

Merino & Corridale wool with what I assume are #32, #36 and #38 felting needles.