Saturday, December 14, 2013

Happy Holidays!!!

    Preparing for the holidays is wiping me out!  Haven't had time to do anything
new, but I finished my illustration for the SCBWI Tomie dePaola award Wednesday.  
There will be a gallery of the entries after the winning entry is made public and I will 
post my piece here on Jan. 11.  I look forward to seeing the gallery!
    I am thinking I will take a two week holiday break and won't be back posting 
on my blog until Jan. 4th.  Searched through my sketchbooks trying to find the 
Christmas bookmark I lost and I found this sketch.  I did it on tracing paper and it
is a little rough, but I didn't want to say Happy Holidays! without a little visual.  
May you have a wonderful, happy, healthy and safe holiday and new year
Peace and love,  Rachel 

Fern Fawn waited patiently for
Buck to answer the door. 

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Floating About

     Hello!  Sorry for the late post, has been a very long day.  I have been working on my
entry for the Tomie dePaola Award.  http://www.scbwi.org/awards/tomie-depaola-award  
I did a lot of sketching for this one and changed my mind about what I wanted for the final
art after already transferring it onto my paper.  Sometimes I think I jump the gun a little and
don't analyse the work enough.  Showing my sketches will give away my final too much but
I did want to share a sneak peek of my tracing.  This is another thing I have learned along the way.
I wasn't sure what colors I wanted to use so 
put tracing paper over my final sketch to sort out the colors.  My palette of colors are bright, which makes me a little nervous.  I tend to stick with softer or natural color.  Coloring with pencils and
actually painting on the tracing paper also helped me figure out pattern.  I was going to make this
little doggie solid blue, then thought about spots, but then tried the tiny ones.  The tiny ones are cute 
but I hope it doesn't look like blue chicken pox!  The illustration prompt if you haven't read it is
a poem called "Sneeze" so maybe it is fitting.  Anyway painting with brights and working
on this made me feel so happy, and *thought bubble* This is why I do this.
More news is that I signed up for Lilla Rogers Assignment Bootcamp.   http://lillarogers.com/school/assignment-bootcamp
It starts in February and I am very excited.  I have been feeling lately like
one of those balloons you blow up, don't tie, then let loose to go nuts 
   about the room.  Perhaps direction will help me fine tune my style and 
figure some things out.  Until then I will be floating about
the room.  See ya next weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!!!