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Today's Inspiration: The Art of Summer Reading: Robert McCloskey

Today's Inspiration: The Art of Summer Reading: Robert McCloskey (originally posted by Leif Peng). This is a blog post I love about Henry Reed's books illustrated by Robert McCloskey and has great drawings.

As some of you know, I spent the last 6 weeks drawing and developing images for a story about a budding female werewolf.  These are my final submissions  for the class I took online with illustrator and Art Director Marc Sheff (http://marcscheff.com) and Art Director for Orbit Books Lauren Panepinto (http://www.laurenpanepinto.com) through the SmArt School (http://www.smarterartschool.com).  These are my final submissions.  Feel free to vote for your fav!  ;} 

Do you know about Strega Nonna--Grandma Witch.  Check out the video at http://video.nhptv.org/video/1689045929 .  Illustrated and written by Caldecott Award winning Tomie de Paola.   See more at http://www.tomie.com/about_tomie/ .

Van Gogh Inspiration

From Van Gogh letters. . . turns out Van Gogh was a great thumbnail sketcher.  See http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/18/497.htm .  He was a great letter writer and talked about his work in depth in letters to friends.  See the painting he did from this sketch below.  Notice how he made notes about color, texture, etc. to remind him later.  You can almost see his sketch strokes from this little drawing.  

He later did a painting from all of these sketches which you can see by going to the web link above.

The two pictures above are the sketch and later painting.

Good drawing is always at the base of good painting.  Thus, I am challenging myself by taking an online illustration workshop and intensive drawing over the next six weeks!

Work In Progress

 I am currently working on a very large wall mural to decorate a pool cabana wall.  The ceilings are approximately 18 feet high so this is a huge undertaking.  The above photo shows about three 2 to 4 hour painting sessions.  I will likely be working on it through the end of summer.

 My doggies Star and Cheyenne help me on all my projects.  They get a little hot in the pool area so I try to paint early and late in the day.

My favorite part so far are these fierce little seahorses.  They are almost completed.  Some have commented that they are scary and mean looking.  That's a nice complement to the gentle giants that will eventually be the focal point of the mural.  Maybe they are really sea dragons!  

Good life guards, of course, have to be a little fierce! I've always loved seahorses!  There are so many variations.  Go see at http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/sea-horse/ .  Check back to see progress!