Process: Personal Work

I recently finished this new piece as my assignment for the Austin SCBWI Conference. I signed up for the conference a bit too late to have completed the piece BEFORE the event, but art director Laurent Linn was kind enough to invite all attendees to submit a revised or new piece, via email, a few weeks after.

I've also been thinking about experimenting with my style, and this piece gave me the perfect opportunity to try some new ideas. Those of you that know, know I LOVE colored pencil. One of the biggest downsides to working with CP is the time it requires, especially in my chosen approach of burnishing (full paper coverage). I decided to try working at a smaller scale and enlarging my pencil work, to bring out the hidden textures in my usually ultra-smooth looking work.

Concept & character sketches. I didn't have a lot of time to really develop them as much as I would have liked, and I kept second-guessing myself… I eventually decided I just had to go with it and see what happened.

Background, completed separately. It's about 30% of the final size (70% reduced scale). The spot I pulled out isn't even 100%, but it gives you an better idea of the hidden texture that comes out with enlarging.

Characters are about 50% reduced scale. I'm naturally drawn to line work, but I hoping to incorporate the line work in future pieces in a fully digital way, as seen below.

I did single line drawings are random sizes and scaled them as needed to find a composition that worked for the story/piece. These are done in black colored pencil, which adds to the texture/grittiness of the line (although I'd like to try some regular graphite lines, just to see the difference). I them remove the white paper and digitally edit the line colors as needed (mainly via blending layers in photoshop).

So,what do you all think? I'm enjoying this direction, hope you are too!