Monday, May 09, 2011

New Work: Charlie's New Friend

Last weekend, our local SCBWI Chapter sponsered a special Illustrator's Professional Development Day, with art director, Laurent Linn, from Simon & Schuster. It involved working on a picture book project, a double page spread from a text that Laurent Linn supplied (he sent all participants two manuscripts to choose from) -- in advance of the actual event. The process involved getting direct feedback from Laurent at the sketch stage and finished with a 20 minute individual critique on the day of the event.

I chose a story about a shy little pig learning to make new friends. I really wanted to get a strong portfolio piece out of this assignment, and I think I did. I have a LOT of photos and scans from the whole process, which I will post soon - but for now I just wanted to share this with everyone! Enjoy!

5 comments:

Julia said...

Absolutely brilliant! What medium do you work in, your style is fantastic!

Julia x

John L said...

Beautiful work! This is colored pencil? It looks like a painting, the colors and details are so sharp and clean. I love the lighting and texture.

melinda beavers said...

Thank you Julia and John! Yes, this is all colored pencil - it's a process I developed naturally, but have come to learn is called "Burnishing" - blending color with pressure to achieve this soft, smooth look. Some colored pencil artists use colorless blenders or solvents, but I just use the pencils, and blend color with color. Thanks for stopping by to look!

Alicia Padrón said...

Oh MY GOODNESSS!!!!!!! This is fantastic! I love everything about it!! :oD

About the cp. I used to work cp this way too. Nobody taught me, I just did it naturally and you can accomplish pretty amazing effects. I remember once I rendered objects to look like marble and loved how it came out.. BUT it really hurts my wrists after a while because you have to press hard on those color pencils.

Anyway, I adore this!!!

Wendy Wright said...

Beautiful! :)

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