Eeeeee! So excited, my copies of Riley’s Lost Tooth (Written by Diane Cantrell, Illustrated by moi) arrived in the post! Hera was right into them, opening up each one up, flipping through the pages, then declaring “The End.” I’m really pleased with how they’ve turned out, Brown Books did a great job. Riley’s Lost Tooth now available online at Amazon.com. Book launch party in San Antonio is planned for March 27th… I’ll post details later!

Wow, I just watched the trailer for Riley’s Lost Tooth… I’ve never had an animated trailer made of my work before, is a bit weird and cool at the same time seeing your characters come alive and move! Here’s the Riley’s Lost Tooth trailer on YouTube. RLT is currently at the printer, am waiting eagerly to see how the finished product turns out!

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!

All of the hard work is done… the InDesign files are packaged, zipped, and FTP’d, and now Riley’s Lost Tooth is now in the hands of our printer! It’s been exactly twelve months to the day, from my initial quote for the illustrations, to reading the manuscript, to sketches, to watercolor painting, to layout and finally to preparing the files for the printer. Even now the journey isn’t complete as copyright has to be arranged, ISBN registered, and a myriad of checks to go through on the printer’s end before it is finally in our hands. But on my end of things the process is finished and I just have to wait patiently to see how it all turns out! While it feels like the end of the process, it’s actually just the start for this book, whose life will start once it actually hits the shelves in a few months.

I’m a little over halfway through stitching together the scans of my watercolour illustrations for Riley’s Tooth, written by Diane Cantrell (Author of Good-bye, Baby Max). I’m really pleased with how the illustrations have turned out, especially since they are entirely in watercolour (a first for me as normally I switch to pencil crayon for the finer details.) Here’s a preview of three of the sixteen illustrations for Riley’s Tooth.

As an old-school artist, a valuable skill to have is knowing how to scan and stitch together your original paintings digitally. At the moment I’m stitching together the scans of the final artwork for Riley’s Tooth by Diane Cantrell.  Here’s how I’m going about it…

1. Scan your artwork in pieces :
• Place your artwork on the scanning bed starting in the upper left corner.
• Find a place on your scanner where you can visually align your artwork. I piece of masking tape down on either edge of the scanner to quickly align it.
• Tip : If your artwork is thin and warped, place a magazine on top of the artwork about the size of the scanning bed area as it will help press it down. Then stack on more weight.
• Tip : If your artwork is too large for the scanning bed, make sure it lays down flat and place something heavy on it to hold it in place. Sometimes removing the lid off the scanning bed and not using it can help maneuver for very large pieces.
• The more flat your artwork is, the more even the colours will turn out in the scan and you’ll reduce shadows. Scanning in pieces will inevitably create shadows on the edge of the scan, but the bigger the angle the larger the shadows are and more difficult to remove using Photoshop.
• Set the scanner to at least 300dpi and at least 100% in size (adjust to your needs.)
• Make sure your artwork is secure, and start the scan.
• When the scan is done, carefully lift your artwork and slide it over so that you can scan the next portion of your illustration, allowing 2-3 inches of the are you just scanned to be scanned again. This overlap will help you stitch together the illustrations in Photoshop (and trust me, it’s an awful feeling when you’ve scanned something very large to piece it together only to find a big chunk missing from not overlapping enough!) (Read on …)

Here’s a second peek at the illustrations I’m working on for Diane Cantrell’s children’s book, tentatively titled Riley’s Tooth. This is a really enjoyable stage as it’s where I make a lot of the decisions about what colours everything will be. I generally have a good idea when I start out, but finding just that right shade of colour happens when I mix the paint in the palette… for instance, I knew I wanted the fairy to have blue hair, but it wasn’t until I started mixing colours that I came up with the idea to paint her hair with aqua streaks to mimmick a swirl of toothpaste.

I like to try new things with each new children’s book, and with these illustrations I am emphasizing textures with watercolour techniques such as salting (to give clothing/fabrics interesting textures) and dropping clear water to create flowers in the colour (for magical sparkles around the tooth fairy.) These photos I took over a week ago, and since then the paintings are much more detailed. Will try to post another peek soon!

p.s. You may have noticed the big pink dog… I like to bring sub-stories (secondary visual stories within the illustrations that aren’t in the original manuscript) into illustrations as they are fun for kids to spot, things such as having bugs doing silly things in the background. This sub-story is that one of the dogs really doesn’t like the tooth fairy, and tries to swat it with a fly swatter… only to get magically turned into a fluffy, pink puff-dog for the rest of the book!

You can see some of the finished sketches for Riley’s Tooth in this previous post.

Here’s another sneak peak at the illustrations I’m working on for Diane Cantrell’s new story, Riley’s Tooth. I’m working with watercolours on Arches medium watercolour paper which I’ve taped down onto masonite board. I’ve just finished painting the first layer, and am moving onto building up the layers of colour and detail. I always enjoy the loose first wash of colour… the crazier it looks initially the better once you go over and tighten up the details.

You can see some of the finished sketches for Riley’s Tooth in this previous post.

I have the pleasure of working for a second time with Diane Cantrell, author of Mom’s Choice Award winning picture book, Good-bye Baby Max. The title of our latest picture book is yet to be set, but I can tell you the story is about three pups who don’t quite grasp the concept of the Tooth Fairy and try in earnest to find their owner’s first lost tooth. I’ve just finished up the sketches… here are a handful to have a sneak peek at! The finals will be in watercolour & pencil on Arches paper. I transferred the sketches with an Artograph a couple nights ago, so once I’ve taped the paper down to masonite boards I will start painting, yippee!

Christmas image available Royalty Free at ImageZoo

Just wanted to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a safe & happy New Year! Am missing the snow here in sunny Australia… but we’ll just have to make some sand-angels on the beach instead, as we’re having a bbq on Christmas day with family and friends! I’ll be taking a bit of a blog break over the holidays… but in the mean time here’s a sneak peak (left) at a sketch from the children’s book I’m currently working on, Riley’s Lost Tooth by Diane Cantrell.