This was another of my favourite dresses of Hera’s, and was way too complicated to attempt illustrating with pen & digital colour, so again did a watercolour study of it for my diary of Hera’s stuff. I don’t feel I did the pattern justice, but at least captured the warmth & feel of this cute little garden dress.

This dress was one of those great eBay finds for like $10, and Hera wore it till it was falling apart and faded :) I liked it so much I decided to branch out from the ink & digital colour technique to do a watercolour & white pencil study of it for my illustrated diary of Hera’s clothes.

Here is my tribute to those beloved shoes Hera sadly outgrew a few months ago, now part of my illustrated diary of Hera’s clothes. Drawn with pen, coloured digitally, above is the after & before.

P.S. For those illustrator parents out there, crocs are the best shoes ever for toddlers in the summer, they can wear ‘em in the water, in the dirt, they’re easy to clean, and don’t fall off! I heart crocs. I think these faux crocs were like $5 at The Children’s Place, money very well spent.

Before starting my next project, I’m taking a break for a few weeks and spending some creative time drawing, including more of Hera’s outfits! I’m switching over to a plain old ballpoint black pen for my linework and love it, though you have to be careful not to smudge the ink while it’s drying. Colour is applied afterwards in Photoshop using my trusty dusty wacom intuos pen.

As another year fast approaches its end, looking back I realize how busy a year 2009 has been! I kept my paintbrush and pencil busy with completing just under 100 illustrations… wowsers, that’s a new illustration every three days! The illustrations include three children’s books (Celebrate! by Rubicon Publishing, Riley’s Lost Tooth by Diane Cantrell, and Spotty & Eddie Visit Percé by Lisa M. Chalifoux), a collection of green themed illustrations for ImageZoo, and several more little illustrations for my illustrated diary of Hera’s outfits. Looking forward to 2010!

I finished colouring a few more ink illustrations for my diary of Hera’s outfits. Enough distractions, back to drawing turtles for Spotty & Eddie!

Here is another of the new illustrations I’ve completed for my diary of Hera’s outfits… a simple graphite pencil drawing, with a colour layer tinted over top in Photoshop.

I’ve been busy the last few weeks working on revisions for Spotty & Eddie’s latest adventure, as well as designing the layout for Riley’s Lost Tooth. In between my creative banter with the two lovely authors I’m working with, I’ve been doodling a few more outfits for my diary of Hera’s outfits. More to come!

Has been a while since I did a doodle of one of Hera’s outfits… here’s one she long ago grew out of I just now had the chance to colour in using my new Intuos Wacom tablet. It’s taking some getting used to colouring with a digital pen, but it’s already so much nicer than using a mouse for these illustrations.

One of the best things about summer for babies is you can dress them in just a top with their diapers… this green top was one of my favourites to do that with as it looked adorable with her fuzzy yellow diaper and yellow button clip. Scribbled as part of my illustrated diary of Hera’s outfits. (Illustrated with pen on bond paper, colour applied afterwards in Photoshop.)