Galileo's Daughter

About ten years ago I listened to Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter on audio. I don't remember much of the details, but the idea stuck with me. Midway through last year I worked up a rough sketch on the topic, which sat on my desktop until about a month ago, when I found I had some free time to work on my portfolio. 

Galileo had three children, the eldest of which, Virginia Gamba, corresponded with him from her convent in Arcetri (she and her sister Livia were placed in a convent as Galileo could not afford to raise them or pay their dowries) until her death. There is apparently some evidence that she prepared some of his manuscripts for print, and there are references to his work in her letters, and she appeared to be fairly well educated. The idea that Galileo must have shown her what he was working on seemed to me a nice topic for a portfolio piece, and I plan to do a few vignette illustrations to go with this full-page piece. 

This illustration is set in April 1610, when Virginia was 10. She would enter the convent when she was 13 and take the name Marie Celeste.

Here's a detail of the faces:

And here's an animated gif showing the main stages of my process:

I started off with a rough digital sketch. I used pose mannequins and the perspective rulers in Manga Studio to get the rough basics down, and elaborated on that in Photoshop. I then did a rough tonal study to get an indication of whether or not it would work in black and white. 

I refined my sketch in pencil, and then inked it and added watercolour and black pencil. I converted it to full black and white in Adobe Photoshop CC (it was painted in black and white, but there are variations in the tones of the different paints I used)

Winsor and Newton watercolours, Ecoline liquid watercolour, Copic Opaque White, Pentel brush pen, Prismacolour pencil on Moleskine Watercolour paper. 

iPad: Emma

I was feeling rather low the other day, and thus couldn't think of anything to draw. The DVD case for the 2009 BBC Emma, which we'd recently been watching, was to hand, so I grabbed that for some iPad portraiture practice while watching the tv, and here is the result:

This could definitely stand some touchups in Photoshop, certainly it's got a lot of things wrong with it when you put it side-by-side with the original photo, but I think it does look like Ramola Garai. I'm still getting used to having such a small area to work on, and such a large stylus, which I think is why there are fairly large alterations, such as the tilt of her head. It's possible that one day I might edit it on the computer, but for now I'm calling it done. It is at least a big improvement on previous iPad portraiture attempts, and I put a lot of that down to my being given an Intuos stylus for my birthday, with its wonderful pressure sensitivity. It's awfully hard to go back to no pressure sensitivity when you've had the benefits of it for so many years!

About 5 hours or so, over several days, on an iPad Mini (using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro) with a Wacom Intuos stylus.  

Illustrations: Educational Publishing

I've been very busy lately creating blackline master illustrations for ReadyEd publications. Over January and February I did nearly 88 illustrations, most of those in January so the books could be ready for the start of the school year here. Working in Educational Publishing is very interesting, not least because you never know what you might be called upon to draw from one day to the next, although it's often tricky to fit in all of what has to be shown in the one picture. Here's a small selection (the more interesting ones. Several of the books I worked on were on Civics and Citizenship, so I drew a lot of voters and a lot of politicians =P)

A Japanese greeting:

A local Library:

A run-down park:

Fair-Trade coffee:

Grecian Democracy:

A selection of faces (not related):

Pollution in India:

All done in Adobe Photoshop CC with a Wacom Intuos 3.

Illustration: Elsa

If it looks like I haven't been doing much, it's because I haven't. I spent the better part of two weeks in agony, and for most of that no one knew what the problem was – it could have been temporomandibular joint displacement, it could have been trigeminal neuralgia.... but it turned out to be a cracked tooth with an abscess, handily pressing on my trigeminal nerve so as to avoid detection. Let me tell you, it was not pleasant. And I was quite unable to do anything except lie down and wish for death, interspersed by throwing up because the medications (which didn't work) made me sick. To add insult to injury, I spent the evening of my birthday in Emergency, and missed out on actually eating at four meals specifically for celebrating said birthday. Life could have been more fun....

Now that I'm all better, of course, I've got my nose to the grindstone doing all the work I should have been doing over the past couple of weeks, but here is a little illustration I did of Elsa from Frozen, in the spirit of bandwagon-jumping. I started it when I had a bit of free time, and it's intended as part of something bigger.... but as I don't know when or even if that 'something bigger' will materialise, I am blogging the bit that is actually pretty much finished now. It should probably be tweaked, but that ain't gonna happen for a while, anyway:

I need to work on raised chins, but it was fun doing all the sparkles and glowy bits, and having an excuse for a gratuitous reflection!

Adobe Photoshop CC with a Wacom Intuos 3

Sketches: Campion

I was watching the Campion series, starring Peter Davison, while working in December, and was reminded that although I've made several attempts to read the books, I was always thwarted by the library system, which evidently doesn't think Margery Allingham important enough to warrant having many of her books. I had read Mystery Mile and Traitor's Purse, (with about ten years between them, both in terms of their publication and my reading them) but had never managed to get hold of any others. So I got the whole collection as ebooks and have been working my way through them. They don't require too much brain power, which is exactly what I need in the middle of summer, when it's too hot to think too hard.

So here are a couple of sketches relating to the books:

Here is Campion himself (not based on Peter Davison, my likeness-capturing abilities haven't degenerated that much! =P) from the descriptions in the first two books:

This isn't strictly a Campion sketch – I am trying to practice drawing things that I tend to avoid, and decided to start off with this car, based on a screenshot of the credits of the tv series. As far as I can tell it's a 1932 Lagonda. And then I stuck a random couple and a dog in there as well. Overall it's pretty wonky, but at least it's recognisably a car, yes?

(Pentel Brush Pen and Artline 0.4 Drawing System pen)

And finally, a character sketch from a description in Mystery Mile. This was drawn while at a bbq, so I couldn't see what I was doing overly well. =P I wanted to push it a bit further, but didn't quite manage it. I shall blame the low outdoor lighting for that.

“In the midst of this discomfort Mrs Knapp presided affably over a worn and impatient gathering. She was a vast florid person clad in an assortment of garments, each one of which attempted to do only half the duty for which it had originally been intended. Her scrawny reddish hair was drawn tightly into a knot at the back of her head, from which several escaping strands fell over her disordered bodice. Her face was chiefly remarkable for some three or four attempts at a beard which grew out of large brown moles scattered over her many chins.”

All done in a Moleskine Sketchbook and (unless stated) with a 0.5 #B mechanical pencil.

Illustration: Sneezing

This was my entry to the 2014 Tomie de Paola award over at the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. The winners have now been announced (not me, alas, tis ever my lot in life) so I've dug it out to post here. 

The prompt was for a book for babies (2 months to 2 years), 8"x8", illustrating the small poem 'A sneeze is a breeze in your nose', and it was noted that America is a country of diverse ethnicity and the illustrations should reflect that. 

I wanted to include motion somehow, which was a bit tricky with the square format, so as so many baby books include flaps and the like I chose to do a moving circle to follow the progression of a sneeze and mocked-up the illustration to indicate that. 

I would have liked to have been a bit more creative as to style, but I had such a lot to do on top of this that I ended up doing something that I knew I could do quickly and decently.

To see who won, head over to the SCBWI announcement page. 

Adobe Photoshop with a Wacom Intuos 3

Inking: The Glass Slipper

My lovely friend gave me the dvd of The Glass Slipper for Christmas – I'd been wanting to see it for some time, being a sucker for a sweet fairytale adaption, especially if it involves pretty costumes. Continuing on with my inking practice, I took Boxing Day off work (although most of it got eaten by a family visit) and did some sketching from it.

I think I'm definitely getting better with the brush pen here. 

This was technically the first of the two, but I didn't finish it until last night. I wasn't happy with the (nonexistant) likenesses (that's supposed to be Leslie Caron and Michael Wilding there, who knew? =P), so on the basis that I couldn't very well muck it up any further, I extended it far beyond the original screenshot I was using as reference, and practiced foliage (never a strong point) in a big way, inspired by Chris Riddell:

These were done with a Pentel Brush Pen and Artline Drawing System 0.4 pen in a Moleskine Sketchbook.