friendship at first sight?

This certainly isn't friendship at first sight, but it is my latest illo. It's been in the making for quite some time (because I thought of other things I wanted to illustrate). This story is one I wrote when I first began writing in earnest. I have currently revised the story and am now working toward completing three finished illustrations (this time digitally). Who knows where it'll take me, but I'm learning a lot in the meantime!

Petting zoo

Here's my (momentarily) finished product of the illo below. I've been busy with a lot of different things and that, coupled with still learning a lot about digital painting have made it take longer to get things done as quickly as I want to. But I learn something new every time I work with Painter. Some day I might perfect this particular illustration, but at the moment I'm ready to try something else.

I must admit that I get discouraged now and then, thinking that I'll never get to do what I hope to with my illustrating. I know I'm not the best there is out there, but I still feel that I have a good, quality product that people would enjoy. And then, even when I do get discouraged, I don't think I could stop making art. I look at the world through artist eyes . . . I constantly analyze how I would create certain effects I see in real life, always see scenes that I think would be fun to illustrate. On that note, my next project will be of my son walking across a bridge. Our zoo has a really cool play area that gave me the idea.

rough draft - barnyard

We visited the zoo during spring break, which gave me this idea when we visited the petting zoo. This is obviously only a rough draft which I did mostly in Painter. I must admit that I prefer doing the drawing on scratch paper before painting it (as in, I'm not as proficient doing it on the computer), but I decided to try it out this way. I drew a few animals and the barnyard, selected the ones I felt worked best together, laid them out in Illustrator, then added the children in Painter. I'll try to get the entire thing painted soon, but weekends make it harder to get things done . . . so maybe next week.

Jurassic Walk

Here's my latest illo. One of my son's friends wistfully spoke of riding T-Rex one day, which sparked this picture. I've included a close-up since you can't see him very well in the original illustration. It is my first dinosaur, and as I chose not to add too much skin detail, it was lots of fun. My husband (who likes the picture overall) feels like the boy is falling off. I must admit that I can't see what he does. If you have a minute, I'd like to get your opinion about it so I can know if it looks wrong to you and, if so, perhaps you can help me understand what I'm doing wrong. Thanks!

Garden

Here's my latest illustration. I drew it on paper and colored it digitally.

Updated website

Wow it's been a long time. But my lack of blog productivity doesn't mean I've been lacking in illustration productivity. I've had projects to do here and there and am in the process of sending out another round of postcards. I also just updated my website. A lot of my portfolio is the same, but I did add some digital work. It's been a lot of fun learning how to paint on the computer. What I'm working on is making things look less like they've been rendered digitally.