I recently had the opportunity to do an assignment for an illustration workshop run by Random House art director, Maria Middleton, at the Houston SCBWI regional conference. The focus was on character development and the subject was to do our version of The Wizard of Oz. I chose to do a middle grade book cover … More El Mago de OZ, my twist on a classic
For most of my twenty-one years as a freelance illustrator, I have worked in traditional mediums. I am confident using everything from charcoal to oil paints and willingly explore various techniques with them. However, I have not felt confident about creating digital illustrations. I admire the art of many illustrators who work digitally and know … More Going digital!
I recently created these four illustrations for Faces magazine. They are all Aesop’s Fables with a modern twist in the imagery. This first one is City Mouse and Country Mouse. I am continuing with my experimentation with watercolors and colored pencils and am pretty happy with the results for this piece. Up till this illustration, … More Watercolors and color pencils
The following illustrations were done for a manuscript called Winny the Princess Playing Pony that I have written and created a dummy book for . I’ve been experimenting with different styles and media trying to create art that fits the story. It needs to be something young and playful. The above art is done with … More A new style with mixed results
Now that I have the underpainting completed, it is time to get to the good stuff. Color! I work from background to foreground and put in a layer at a time, as opposed to working all the way to finish on each element. Here, I have laid in the sky and far landscape. The next … More Return of the Jackelope – Step 4 – The Painting!
To transfer my sketch to the six foot tall canvas, I enlarged the drawing in Photoshop to the right dimensions and then divided it up and printed it in 11″ x 17″ panels. I taped them all together and then to the canvas. Next, using old fashioned carbon paper placed underneath the sketch, I traced … More Return of the Jackelope – Step 3 – Transferring the Drawing and Underpainting
This is the tight sketch I created for The Return of the Jackelope. I scanned into my computer the thumbnail sketch I thought worked best (as seen in the previous post) and enlarged it in Photoshop. I then reduced the output levels using the Levels adjustment, so that when I printed it out, the sketch … More Return of the Jackelope – Step 2 – The Sketches
Jeff Crosby 