From Thumbnail to Sketch

Weeks ago I did a couple posts about the thumbnail process. (Post 1, Post 2)

Now I'll show you how I translate the thumbnail drawing into a sketch that will later be the drawing for the final paining.

There is always a lot of stuff to figure out in the thumbnail process. I decided for this project to go with a portrait orientation because it works better for to format the eBook for all devices. After making that decision it was much easier to work out the composition for each page. (composition= how you arrange the elements on the page)

For example if we take the first part of the Snow-white story the good queen pricks her finger, there are a lot of different ways to show this. Here are some of my ideas. (also seen in previous thumbnail post #2)

I decided to go with the circled one because I liked the gesture and the framing of the queen. I also felt it was a good way to open almost like you are coming into the story through the window. The story doesn't specifically say if the queen is already pregnant but it implies she is and I went with it.

After I get the thumbnail drawing I like I draw it larger. In art school they taught us to create a rough drawing next. Basically a larger version of the thumbnail but still really rough. This process hasn't really worked for me, I needed to be more attached to what I was drawing to get something I liked in the end.

So, I usually jump into what often becomes the finished drawing. But I always have in the back of my mind that I might have to redraw the whole thing. So there is an attachment balance somewhere. I have to love it enough to put my all into the drawing, and be ready to scrap the whole thing if need be.

Here is the finished drawing that goes with this thumbnail.

 

 

There is a possibility I will make some slight changes before I go to painting but for the most part this drawing will be what becomes the final art.

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Wood Elves Returning to the Undying Lands for Illustration Friday

Here is a quick image of Tolkien's wood elves returning to the undying lands. 

Here it is in Black and White.

And just for fun I made it available as a print, laptop skin, or iphone cover at society6. 

 

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A Note on Fairy Tales

Little Mermaid

I love fairy tales. I remember sitting down with my family every Sunday night to watch Shelly Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre on our pbs station.



My brother and I loved them. My favorite was the "Six Dancing Princesses" (I think because they had pretty dresses). But we all loved "The Princess Who Never Laughed" and "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers" We still quote them to this day.

("e=mc not squared" So. Funny.)

Anyway... I think Faerie Tale Theatre + Disney started my love for fairy tales.

In high school I loved going to the library and checking out books from the J398's I loved reading the fairy tales and looking at the beautiful illustrations.

Three of my favorite fairy tale illustrators happen to be: P.J. Lynch, Trina Hyman, and Lisbeth Zwerger (I think I've mentioned this before but it never hurts to do so again. :)


My art is heavily influenced by them.

Now when I need info about fairy tales I always go to surlalunefairytales.com. It has so much fairy tale info I don't think I'll ever get sick of it. Here is the annotated Little Mermaid. On the site you can find not only text of the tale but illustrations, histories, similar tales across cultures and current retellings of the tales. It's so fabulous.

And just in case you were wondering, my current favorite is The Three Spinners , a tale similar to Rumpelstiltskin. 

What are some of your fairy tale memories. When was the first time you ever remember hearing a classic fairy tale?

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Thumbnail art 2: The actual thumbing part

Yep, you read right. This is another post about thumbnails. But really they are so important in the process. Here are some more thumbnails I did for my Snow-White eBook project.

As you can or maybe can't see these are just small sketches of the same scene over and over. This is the first scene in the book where the queen pricks her finger and wishes for a black red and white baby. (If you don't know what I'm talking about check it out here.)

The boxes with the x are where I plan for text to go in that particular scene. 

I'm still toying with the landscape or portrait question. I like the idea of it being like a movie (the comment Dashbo made last week) but there are also some neat things I can do with the tall format. In this case maybe an opening scene of the tall castle.

But maybe just a scene of the queen will work better. That is what the thumbnails are figuring out for me.

While I'm drawing these here is some of the stuff that is going through my head:
How much of the queen do I need to show?
Will it be better to open with just her? More of the castle, or try to get both?
Why is this one working better than that one?
Doing this book steam punk could be AWESOME!?
How can I do that and keep the fairytale still feeling fairytale-y?
Gees I'm going to have to brush up on my perspective to pull this off.
What kind of window is she by?
Why the heck does she have the window open in the middle of winter... Or is there snow in her house?

Some thoughts are useful. Some are well... not so much.

But, I can also get lame ideas out of my head with these little drawings. As you can see by the first frame with the super boring composition.

 I'll probably keep at this for a bit. Maybe with more than one scene in the book before I make any final decisions about how I'll do this scene. Which way to orient the book and how far steam punk to push it.

What do you guys think? What's the strongest? How do some of you artists work with thumbnails?

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Thumbnail Art

No, I'm not talking about...

Source

I'm talking about...

Thumbnails are tiny drawings artists use to help plan an illustration or book before they get into the nitty gritty. Here are two sets that I made for the Snow-white eBook project (see other art for it here) that I have in the works.

As you can see they are scribble-y,  small, and quick. With these I can see the whole book at a glance and know if one page or a group of pages is going to work. Some of them it might be obvious what is happening in the picture some of them might only make sense to me.

Here I am trying to decide first of all which way I want to orient my book. Landscape or portrait?

After I decide I'll go in and refine a lot of the scribbles until I have compositions for each picture that are awesome (hopefully) and work with the whole story. Then I start on sketches for "real".

What do you guys think should I go with landscape or portrait?




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Why NOT to steal ideas.

Two weeks ago I wrote a blog post about being inspired by other artists. Something I love to do. This week I'm going to tell you how it can sometimes be taken too far.

A couple days ago I came across this video interview with Iain McCaig. A very amazing illustrator and concept artist. It's kinda long but I highly recommend watching it all.

One part that really got me thinking was when he talked about taking books with illustrations by his heroes and putting them away. It is at about 8:30 on the video.

When I watched this video I was working on some dwarf character designs for a Snow-white eBook. It was being a real struggle and I just wasn't making headway.  I saw the video and realized I was guilty of exactly what he was describing. I had various books around me with drawing of dwarves by other people and was checking them out for ideas about clothes or beards, or gesture, etc. But I wasn't having any fun. (and BTW fun is the whole point of drawing a fairy tale eBook)

After watching the video I put the books away and have tried to be super conscious not to have anything like that in front of me while I am drawing. It's been a freeing experience.

I still love looking at great art I'm just not going to to it while I'm drawing any more.

Here are a couple of the drawings I did. They are not yet the finished designs but they feel more alive than my first attempts.

 

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Stealing People's ideas

Artists steal from each other all the time.

I love looking at other artists work to get ideas. Sometimes I copy part, or all, of a painting or drawing so I can learn how artists better than me do things.  This type of stuff no one sees but me, but it's in my brain somewhere.

Other times I look at other artists just to get inspired. Ask, how do they draw, expressions, wrinkles, shoes, or compose a picture?

PJ Lynch, and artist I am often inspired by, had a really great example on his blog a while back called "Inspired by Dulac".  I really enjoy seeing how he incorporated another artists way of using space into his image.

When I created the Little Match Girl, and Cinderella illustrations I wanted it to be an exercise on using space the way Lisbeth Zwerger does. She creates paintings with beautiful areas of empty space. I really enjoyed working that way and hope I can incorporate more of that in my work in the future. Here is a link to an interview she gave about her art.

How are you inspired by other artists?



The winner of last week's giveaway is...
... Camilla!
(winner was chosen completely at random by drawing numbers from a bowl)
please email me at illustration(at)manelleoliphant(dot)com with your name and mailing address, and I will send you your prize 

So if you didn't win there is one more chance. (once you have won you are no longer eligible to enter again but feel free to spread the word. ;)
Or, if you don't want to wait check out my print shop or card shop to get your own Manelle art right away.

Here is what you can win.

Three illustrated art prints. They are printed on Epson Velvet fin art paper and signed by me.
They are in two sizes one 5.75x8.5 and two 13x8.5 prints.  (not standard frame sizes)

To enter this contest here is what you need to do.

1. Comment below before Midnight MST on January 2, 2012 (p.s Happy New Year)

You can comment anything but if you need a jump start I'd love to hear about ways art inspires you in any way.

2. Tweet or Facebook status a link back to this blog post.

I'll announce the winner next Thursday.
Good luck everyone. 


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Introducing... new stuff, and giving things away.

Hello my friends.
I've been pondering (probably not what you've been pondering pinky) about what to do with my blog, and I've come up with something.

The plan is this:
My new sketch blog is now here on tumblr. I will be posting on it at least 4 times a week until otherwise noted.  My sketch theme for December is "my sketchbook idea generator".

What does that mean you ask? I'll let you know next Thursday, here on Manelle Oliphant Illustration.

In Fact, I will be posting on this blog on every Thursday, also until otherwise noted.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL (I know the all caps are annoying but sometimes I just can't help it)

I also want to introduce to you my new card shop and print shop. And to celebrate the fun I'm having my first ever blog giveaway.

(I kinda love giveaways, even though I've never won anything.)

Here is what you can win.

Yes it's true, three whole signed Manelle Oliphant Illustration prints. They are in two sizes one 5.75x8.5 and two 13x8.5 prints.  (not standard frame sizes, nor are they the new and improved prints you can find in the shop.)

To enter here is what you have to do.
1. Comment on this post before midnight on Monday December 5)
2. Tweet or Facebook status a link to this blog post.

Easy!

Then I'll pick the winner randomly by putting your comment number in a hat. Then we'll have some kind of email get together where in get some into and mail the prints. (awesome!)

I'll announce the winner next Thursday here on this blog.

Ok one more thing.
I just happen to have more than one of those lovely little prints up there so I'm planning on having this give away each week for the next five. So if you keep checking back you have five chances to win. (Why not make it big, we are launching a whole new thing here?)

AND NOW THAT'S ALL for today. Don't forget to check out the shops (cards, prints), my new sketch blog , and start commenting.

Melwick Page 27

Here is the penultimate Melwick page.

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Melwick Page 25

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Melwick Page 24

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Bet some of you wondered if I was really going to get this done today. Well, yes, yes I am, and here you go. Thanks for indulging my break. There are a lot of things to get done. But I believe I can safely say that from now until the end of the story I will have a new page every Tuesday, no battle.

Melwick Page 23

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Here is the new Melwick page.
So I just realized online the resolution isn't good enough for  you to read the papers flying out of Wizard Ren's pocket. So FYI they are all spells to mess up good ol' Melwick including "Spell 2, Castle Blockage" and "Spell 3 Melwick's Downfall"

Gerber is holding the castle blocking spell.

Hope you like it.

Manelle

Wizard Melwick page 20

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Here is the next Melwick page. I'm getting excited for next week's page as well. We are about to the climax. I hope it's climactic. I've learned a ton and think I will probably try a new story after Melwick is done, but do a better job of it.
Anyway, enjoy today.

Melwick page 18

It's the middle of the night. Lame of me. But here is Melwick. Not so lame of me.
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Wizard Melwick page 17 and Reminiscing

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I was listening to The Grey King by Susan Cooper and I got to feeling a little nostalgic about some of the other books I enjoyed as a child but haven't read recently. Of course besides Susan cooper I loved Trina Schart Hyman's beautiful illustrations. I used to check out her books from the library by the bucket load and then just stare at them.

One of my other absolute favorite childhood authors is Lloyd Alexander. I found this on YouTube today and it reminded me of how much I love his books. It took me a great long time to get through the Prydain Cronicles the first time, but really loved them. After those I read everyone of his books I could get my hands on. My eighth grade Halloween costume was a Town Cat, and I remember being in college and still getting excited about new books he had coming out.

It's good to be reminded of some of these things that inspired me to create art, and books for children.

Wizard Melwick page 16

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Wizard Melwick page 14

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Wizard Melwick page 13

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Wizard Melwick page 12

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Melwick Page 8

Well it's almost still Tuesday. I haven't gone to bed yet so to me, still Tuesday.  Here is the next page of the story. Look for a new one next Tuesday. Hopefully earlier in the day. :) I think I'm going to bed now.

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