I was pleased to discover that the first four stories of Little Land Adventures, which I illustrated a few years ago, has now been divided into four separate books. Little Bird, Little Pig, Little Iguana, and Little Raccoon are now available on Amazon.com for $9.99 each. (Have a sneak peak at the illustrations inside.)
Yippee, another one of my children’s books has hit the virtual shelves… The James Family’s “Little Land Adventures” is now available online at Amazon.com! Book 1 features the adventures of Little Bird, Little Iguana, Little Racoon, and Little Pig… four of the many characters that live in Little Land! These illustrations were a lot of fun to do…. illustrated entirely with a plain old HB graphite pencil, then tinted with a little colour in Photoshop (check out my Photoshop tutorial here.)
Well this is the last story in the Jame’s Family’s “Little Land Adventures” book that I’ve been illustrating over the last month, about a Little Pig who likes to eat candies all day long… and ends up with a nasty tooth-ache because of it!
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Just finished the illustrations for the third story in the Little Land Adventures by The James Family… about a Little Raccoon named Raoul.
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This week I finished the illustrations for the second story in the Little Land Adventures by The James Family… about a Little Iguana named Iggy. We used to have an iguana named Rex, so it was fun reminiscing while drawing this cute little iguana who is facing a big scary hurricane with his family’s support.
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The illustrations for The James Family’s “Little Land Adventures : Book 1” are coming along quickly. I’ve just completed the illustrations for the first story in the book about Little Bird. Working with pencil (in black & white) again has been pretty relaxing, as I can mainly focus on shading & tones without thinking of colour. (To see how I apply colour digitally to pencil illustrations, check out this previous post.) I’m working on the next story in the book, Little Lizard, will post soon!
This illustration technique me feels like I’m a little kid again and colouring in the lines! I really enjoy this style, as I can take my time with my B-pencil & smudge stick rendering an illustration… and then hop on the computer and create the final black & white and colour print-ready files respectively in a matter of minutes. It is an ideal style for creating a lot of illustrations in a short amount of time, as it achieves a traditional feel without the time involved in creating watercolour paintings.
The step-by-step process I follow to colour my illustrations in Photoshop is :
• Illustrate the character with a graphite pencil on bond paper (I like printer paper as it’s smooth and fits on the scanning bed!)
• Scan each illustrations at high resolution
• Create a Photoshop file for the character illustration
• Remove the character from the background and place it on its own layer, carefully removing the whitespace with a soft edged eraser tool or feathered magic wand selection (see below)
• Adjust the contrast
• Save out a flattened, grayscale version as a TIFF (I’ve set up an action to do this in Photoshop automatically for me)
(Read on …)
I’ve just completed the final character illustrations & map for the The James Family’s “Little Land Adventures : Book 1″ and am quite excited by the results! I had the challenge of the book being printed in both B&W and colour, and thought I’d try a technique I developed while at Image Craft Inc., of scanning my finished graphite pencil illustrations and colouring them in Photoshop. It’s a different feel to watercolour & coloured pencil… as the soft pencil drawings give it a sketchy texture, and the tint of colour gives the illustrations a nostalgic colour palette and feeling.
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I’m working book with The James Family called ‘Little Land Adventures’ about several little animals and their adventures! The sketches are finished & approved for the first book, which stars four of the thirteen little characters, so I’m ready to start the final illustrations, whoooo!
This is going to be a little different, as the books will be printed in 2 formats… B&W and colour, both different sizes. So I’ll have to keep the contrast of the illustrations high so that they translate well both in colour and black & white.
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