I managed to sqeeze in 20 minutes of sketching from the couch yesterday for SketchCrawl 18, while holding my 6-week old daughter. Sketching babies is one of those things you have to do really loosely… they just wriggle around too much to get too focused on the details, so quick gestural drawings are all I really had time to do. Was fun though, will be keeping my sketchbook closeby to do more scribbles of her cuteness.

Be sure to check out some of the fabulous sketches up on the SketchCrawl forum, such as the one above by Marc Taro.

We also had a nice time for Earth Hour last night… hung around with family and chatted in candlelight for my birthday. Was kind of fun not having the lights on, with the occasional cheeky comment from brother-in-laws about the fridge light being on whenever someone went for a snack!

This Saturday, March 29th, aside from celebrating my 28th birthday, I’ll be satisfying my creative and green sides by participating in SketchCrawl 18, followed by playing a game of Settlers of Catan by candlelight during Earth Hour from 8pm-9pm.

Earth Hour is an event set up by the WWF, where they’ve encouraged thousands of people worldwide to turn off their lights for one hour to increase awareness of the need for action to act against global warming. Just switch your lights off between 8pm-9pm your time… and if you’re really enthusiastic, switch all electrical appliances off, too. Then take a moonlit walk outside and watch the stars with friends, or just take a catnap for an hour. For more details check out the Earth Hour website. (They’ve got a cool web-banner in which your name floats by once you’ve signed up, ta-hee!)

SketchCrawl 18 is basically the artist version of a pub crawl… meet up with a bunch of friends / artists, and sketch like crazy all day! Combine it with some good food (or even with a pub crawl!) and unique locations to visit, then visit the Sketch Crawl forum to share your sketches! Our sketches will be up on my blog as well as on the SketchCrawl forum under Adelaide.

I actually had time last night to just doodle a little fan art in front of the tv (being nine months pregnant has its perks!) Thought I’d share with the world that I just love Michael Cera… fell in love with him when he played awkward teenager George Michael Bluth in Arrested Development (best… show… ever…) and have enjoyed following his acting career since. From the web series Clark & Michael to the lovable flick Juno, the Canadian actor brings an adorable man-child sincerity to his characters.

Today I finished four of the 12 illustrations for children’s book “Tartan Meets the Queen,” by Charline Crous & Lauren Everton… thought I’d share a sneak peak!

So these illustrations start out as just plain old graphite pencil drawings (above), and I tint them with colour digitally in Photoshop.

I’m LOVING the new paper I’m using for this book, it’s a very smooth, white bristol-type board… much nicer to draw with pencil on than cold-press illustration board.

I also discovered a new favourite tool… the Staedtler “Mars rasor” eraser pencil with brush. It’s one of those hard erasers, and it’s lovely because I can sharpen it to erase those tiny little details that are hard to get crisp with a kneaded or rubber eraser.

To see other posts on “Tartan Meets the Queen,” check out :

• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Sketches
• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Concept Boards

“Tartan Meets the Queen” © Charline Crous & Lauren Everton, Illustrations © Heather Castles

My sketches have just been approved for “Tartan Meets the Queen,” by Charline Crous & Lauren Everton… can’t wait to start the finals! Here is a sneak peak at a few of the spreads from the story. I plan to illustrate these with regular old graphite pencil on paper first… then I’ll scan, and colour the illustrations digitally with Photoshop (check out my easy tutorial here.)

To see other posts on Tartan Meets the Queen, check out :

• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Concept Boards

Developing concepts and thumbnailing is a step that I don’t often share with my authors, but is always the first thing I do before sketching in detail the layout of a children’s book. The first thing I do is break up the manuscript into chunks that I think would be fun to illustrate… basically dividing up the manuscript into however many pages the book will be. Then I brainstorm ideas and write notes for each spread, which gets out the cobwebs before starting to sketch! Then I sketch thumbnails (which are very small rough drawings) of each spread. By thumbnailing, I can work out where I want the text to go, what reference I’ll need to gather for the subject matter, and whether the compositions are working well. For “Tartan Meets the Queen,” by Charline Crous & Lauren Everton, I thought it might be interesting to share this earlier step with both authors to involve them earlier on in the creative process. You can see here some of my notes, thumbnails, and gathered reference materials for the story which I sent to the authors in PDF format.

Well, I’ve been a bit negligent blogging the last few weeks as I’ve been working hard on the sketches for Tom Krause’s children’s book, “The Little Boy’s Smile.” It’s a fantastic story, about a little boy who moves to Frown Town where all everyone does is frown… and you guessed it, he just doesn’t fit in because he smiles all the time! Now that the sketches are approved, I’m setting up the final illustrations and working on the first colour proof. The finals will be in acrylic on illustration board, so bright, vibrant colours. So check back, I’ll be posting my work-in-progress as I’m building up the layers of my acrylic paintings.

Check out my other posts about The Little Boy’s Smile :

• • The Little Boy’s Smile | Step-by-Step Painting
  

Illustrations © Heather Castles, Story © Nina Saab

I’ve been having fun working with author Nina Saab on her first children’s book, “Bookie and the Scoliosis Diagnosis.” Scoliosis is when a person’s spine grows in a curvy ‘S’ shape rather than straight (you can learn more about Scoliosis on Wikipedia.) The story is a lot of fun, with great characters to illustrate. The book is going to be published in time for for the National Scoliosis Day in Ottawa, Canada this coming November 2007, so the deadline is tight, tight, tight! The sketches were approved just this week, and I’ll be starting the watercolour illustrations next week, so stay tuned! Here are a few sketches from the story…

The book opens with Bookie’s ballet teacher phoning Bookie’s Mom to tell her she thinks Bookie may have scoliosis. I love the ballet classroom setting, especially for little kids, as I always imagine the cute chaos as all the little angels attempt to do these beautifully graceful poses, all the while simply looking like a bunch of little girls pretending to be princessess in their tutus.

While Bookie’s mom is calling Dr. Healy (love her name,) Bookie and her brother listen in. I love it how kids sometimes have to peak up over tables and rails to see what’s going on.

Throughout the story, you’ll notice Bookie’s little brother, who is probably like most little brothers and wants to be included in all the action… and he’s right in the action here, whether he’s wanted or not! I love his enthusiasm for what his sister’s going through… even if he’s a little annoying at times, rummaging through doctor’s drawers… but I think he’s cute even if a little too curious!

This might be a bit oversimplistic… a big scary box for the X-Ray machine! I went and had an x-ray a few months back, and even though I’m an adult, I still found the unknown machine in front of me a little intimmidating, and couldn’t even remember what it looked like… just that it was big & scary! Which is why I didn’t try to make it exactly like a real X-ray machine… just big & mysterious and a little domineering for poor Bookie!

I love the expressions kids get when something scary but fun is about to happen… like getting told you’re going to get hit with a snowball. You tightly close your eyes and bunch up your fists and wait excitedly for it to happen! That’s the feeling I wanted to capture when Bookie was having her first X-ray done.

Heh, again Bookie’s little brother is interrupting Dr. Fixie Bones… gotta love him.

Okalie dokalie, will post some snaps of the watercolours once they’re all set up!

© Heather Castles

Went to the market yesterday and bought some fruit… and I loved the curly tops on these pears! So I sketched them while watching a movie last night, then tinted them with colour in Photoshop this morning with a light layer of each green and yellow.

Illustrations © Heather Castles
Story © Elizabeth Badowski

Thought I’d share the final sketches for Elizabeth Badowski’s children’s book, “Brotherhood of the Stinky Underpants.” I’m pretty excited about starting the final illustrations on these, as the story is pretty fun, and Elizabeth was great to work with having a lot of cute suggestions for the illustrations along thee way as well. The final illustrations are going to be in oil over an acrylic underpainting on illustration board…should be fun! I’ll post again once I’ve got the underpainting done.

(Read on …)