Illustration Friday: EGG

This weeks topic arrived in my in-box right before Easter. Making an image utilizing an Easter egg was just too obvious so I decided to do something with a dragon egg instead. The fairy was taking a cat nap on her mushroom seat when she was awoken by the sound of the dragon hatching. I included some other spring imagery, note the buds in frame one have opened up in frame two.

I had wanted to color this but I had waited far too long to get going on this. Stay tuned for a color version, I hope!

PLAY POSTER: A Crown of Ivy

It's that time of year again where I design a poster for my husband's student's play performance. Usually, I am given a photo of some of the cast to use on the poster, but this time, the photographer wasn't available. So I had the option of illustrating the poster. It could've been an all type poster but the subject matter of the play (which my husband wrote especially for his 6th grade students) screamed for a more Victorian look. I only had the weekend in which to do it and it's been ages since I've drawn in this way, so I was a little nervous. So I spread some books with art by Arthur Rackham, Tony diTerlizzi and Brian and Wendy Froud on the table for inspiration and got to work. I didn't include a background to keep it simple (and also because I just didn't have the time.) The boy and the fairy are pencil drawings that I scanned, the color was done in Photoshop and the background is a pattern that I keep around for projects like this.

Here's the pencil drawing:

Illustration Friday: DUSTY

Too much fairy dust made everything dusty.

I  was really out of my comfort zone working on this illustration. The imagery was right up my alley, but it was rendering the image in Illustrator that challenged me. I had gotten so attached over the years to making images like this using pen and ink and watercolor that it became not just an exercise in digital illustration but an exercise in letting go. Whew!