Seashore Books!

July 26, 2018 · by karencomics · in Book Covers, Illustration. ·

Big news — the children’s books I’ve been working on for the last few years are out! Written by Gloria Snively, published by Heritage House Publishing, illustrated by me, these are beautiful, full-colour, hardcover storybooks that are also educational, about all the critters that live in and around the sea and the seashore. Today I’m just going to give you a sneak peek of the covers, but I’m planning to do a leaf-through video soon so you can see the interiors. Here it is:

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Tags: children's books, children's stories, illustration, illustrator, marine science, nature, ocean, science, seashore

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2 responses to “Seashore Books!”

Sesta Peekstok March 9, 2019 at 7:48 am · · Reply →

Are the books for sale?

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- karencomics March 9, 2019 at 9:23 am · · Reply →
  
  Hi Sesta! Yes they are; I recently received a shipment. Drop me a line (link in the top menu) and we can work out details by email.
  
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Celtic Art

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Coloured Pencil

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“Falling Apples” — When I teach a coloured pencil workshop, I often go buy a bag of apples and hand one out to everyone. Apples are excellent subjects for learning how to build up colour from light to dark. After my demo, he whole class goes back to their tables and becomes very quiet for a while — silence is the sound of creativity! One class I actually had time to draw my apple several times on the same page.

“El Morro” — the famous landmark fort at the mouth of Havana harbour. I got really caught up in the rocks on this one.

“Pink Rose” — One of the most burnished coloured pencil paintings I have ever produced. This little thing is the size of a greeting card, and it took me many hours.

“Bear Hangout” — from a photo I took in Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. There were no visible fences, and everyone wanted to know how I’d gotten so close to the bears! Usually I would just smile and look mysterious.

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The Blues — Indigo and white coloured pencils on toned paper _ ten minute pose

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“Golden Retriever” — coloured pencil. I got the detail of the brush in the background by indenting the paper through a piece of tracing paper with a pencil. The tracing paper protected the working paper from the pencil, and I was able to lightly colour over the indented lines with my coloured pencils, building up layers of mixed colours. I eventually decided the white lines this left were too stark, and went in with very sharp pencils in different colours to tone them down.

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“Bones of the Earth” — a mountain in the Montana Mission Range that has an oddly shaped top above the treeline. It is not a volcano, but I suspect there is a hollow at the top with a lake. However, I did not climb up there to see.

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“Willow Banks” — part of a large wetland park at the base of Montana’s Mission Mountains that I visited once.

“Rainbow Pebbles” — many of the techniques described here are used in this painting

“Winter Tree” — a Christmas card I did for a friend; the white was all masked off with masking fluid, after which I could paint freely, knowing all that lovely snow would be preserved in pristine white paper.

“Storm Building” — I used a paper towel to lift colour out of a solid sky wash for the clouds, then dripped in a bit of grey, then more water for the backwashes.

pebble sampler — I make samplers of many of the techniques during class, using pebble shapes.

Wildly blooming

“Haunted River” — painted over a saran-wrap texture in multiple glazes; an example of mixing paint on the paper.

“Night Lights” — the background nebula-like blooms of sky colour are salt; the individual stars are dots of white ink.

“Long Beach Sketch” — the backwashes created by dripping water into a wet wash created the clouds and the misty effects in the rocks on the right.

“Edge of the Woods” — I started with very light washes to build up the background and lighter tones of the foreground; the dark trees went in last.

Cuban Tree

The UFOs are coming! Or maybe they are flying hats. Suggested by one of the students, I thought it was a great idea. This demo used salt and gouache to make stars and the explosions (or maybe they are fireworks). The city is just simple brushstrokes with a flat brush.

This demo was to blend a nice sunset wash, and to show how to make very quick trees with brush scribbles.

This demo was to show lifting paint out of a blended wash (and add some more for shadows) to make clouds, and how to make aerial perspective by making distant things lighter and bluer. I wasn’t sure what the landscape was going to be, it sort of evolved as I went along.

Demo to show masking (I masked off the blue areas), and how to draw people in about ten seconds! This is kind of a bizarre picture because the blue areas look like holes in the sky, but I kind of like that effect.

“The Sky’s the Limit” — a tiny painting, 4×6 inches, in which I demonstrated lifting wet paint to reveal the light.

“New Horizons” — watercolour, 4×6 inches

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2 responses to “Seashore Books!”

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