Saturday, December 18, 2010

Jeremy Provost

Hi everyone. My name is Jeremy Provost. I am an aspiring illustrator located here in Wisconsin. I am currently building my portfolio through a series of sequential picture book illustrations. Coming up next month is the SCBWI conference in New York. I have registered for the illustrators intensive and am deciding which of these two illustrations to display. I would appreciate any feedback on which to take and how I can still imporve the illustration. Thank you and if you are interested in seeing any more of my work you can visit my website at jproillustration.com.




Thursday, December 16, 2010

Stacey Williams-Ng

       My name is Stacey WIlliams-Ng, and I'm the author and illustrator of Astrojammiesan interactive book app designed for the iPad. It's been a very unique project, mostly because the story was not adapted for interactive formats, but specifically written and designed for the screen! The illustrations, however, were done in a very traditional way: using paint on board. The adaptations we had to make for interactivity were minimal, using techniques common to 2D animation (such as frame-by-frame paintings).
        At first I planned to paint all the images in oils, my favorite medium. However, the reflectiveness of the shiny oils combined with the slow drying times made it an impractical medium for this project. I switched to acrylics and ink on Crescent illustration board. It’s got a nice warm white tone to the board, and it’s as flat as flat can be. The other secret weapon I discovered was a gel medium by Liquitex that makes the paint ultra-matte.
       This is a screen shot of the final scene, which is actually a composite of two paintings: Jimmy (top layer), flying above a space scene that was painted separately as a background.
       If you're interested in learning more about the behind-the-scenes creation of a digital book app, I'd encourage you to visit!
       Stacey Williams-Ng is a Milwaukee-based painter and writer. This is her first interactive book app. To see more of Stacey and "Astrojammies," come to the Apple Store in Mayfair Mall on December 30th, where she'll be doing an author visit at 6pm. Also be sure to tune into Fox6's "Real Milwaukee" on Tuesday, December 28th to see Stacey present "Astrojammies" and tell more about how the project began. For more information about Demibooks, please visit demibooks.com.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

James Fullmer

Try a New Technique
     So here is a new technique I tried called, peinture à l'essence. It was a technique developed by Edgar Degas to mimic the look of pastel but because it is painted using traditional oils, it does not require the protective glass in the framing. Although Degas abandoned it, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec adopted it and used it the rest of his career.
     It starts with using a piece of cardboard for a palette. This allows the oils in the paint to be wicked away into the porous board. The artist uses turpentine to get the drier paints to the right consistency and then the panel (an unprimed, untempered hardboard or chipboard) is painted using more of a pastel technique. In this technique one is not supposed to "paint" with the brush but rather draw with various layers of color. The paint dries almost immediately allowing you to continue with the next layer.
     Although mine is perhaps more textured than some, I found I really liked this technique.

Ned Gannon - Slipstream

Nedgannon.com

Becky Driscoll

This is a Christmas design that has two parts to it. I'm planning on using this as a postcard. Here is the front:



Here is the inside, just inked in for now.



 www.rgavneydriscoll.com