Day Six and Seven: Portfolio Project with Nina Rycroft

Day Six and Seven of Nina Rycroft's online course, Portfolio Project. 

Day Six, Session One, was with Wen Sylvestre looking at How to Find Your Own Art Voice & Style. This is a idea that many aspiring children's illustrators struggle with, how do you find you own style? 

Wen walked us through how she worked on finding her own style, where you are no longer copying someone else's style. You need to:
1. Look into yourself, and
2. Explore and capture your environment.

She asked us to answer many questions but the most central question was Who Am I? 
To find out more about this process see here.  

I took on the challenge to not just answer the questions in words but to push myself to draw the answers. 

What do you do in your spare time?

Day Five with Nina Rycroft's Portfolio Project

Day Five of Nina Rycroft's online course, Portfolio Project. 

We began day five with Ben Whittacker- Cook (author of Florence Fox Goes to School) who showed us How to Write a Great Bio in 100 words. See my About Me page for my new short biography.

The second session today was with Amy Calautti or @amygorgeousness who talked about Illustration Challenges - Projects to Publication. One Instagram challenge that Amy takes part in is #drawthisinyourstyle She challenged us to take part by drawing one of her illustrations in our own style.

Amy reminded me to keep my SCBWI portfolio link updated.

Finally, take a look at Amy's blog where she has more information about portfolio submissions and organising your to do list into manageable bites. 

Day Two: Portfolio Project with Nina Rycroft.

Day Two of Nina Rycroft's online course, Portfolio Project. 

It has taken me a day (today is actually Day Three) to mull over the CHALLENGE set by Susanne Gervay and Marjorie Crosby-Fairall. They set an illustration challenge to take a child from a classroom and give them a character.

My mind went blank and I've worked in schools for many years. I was thinking all kinds of things to illustrate even an incident in the sand pit and then POCK! It hit me in the head like a yo-yo trick gone wrong. 

This is a work in progress and still needs colour but I like to let my ink dry for 24 hours before I paint over it.

Susanne & Marjorie: Illuminate Don't Decorate (Show Don't Tell)

The second session was a video of Katrina Avery about 'Fitting it all in - An IllustrationBiz Planning Tool'. I was a founding member of IllustrationBiz and I value Katrina's insights about the business of illustration. 

Towards the end of 2018 I began working on planning my day in blocks around my energy levels and daily commitments. This change was inspired by the YouTube video The Daily Block Schedule by Jordan Page (Thanks Jen Storer for sharing this in the Duck Pond). I found that Katrina's planning tool dovetails quite nicely in with Jordan's ideas. 

Katrina: Organise, Prioritise and Plan 
I also liked this thought from Katrina 'Is your disorganisation my emergency?'

Day One: Portfolio Project with Nina Rycroft.

Today I started to watch the latest online course by Nina Rycroft, Portfolio Project. She has brought together such an amazing and inspiring group of people. Day One was Karen Abend and Penelope Pratley. Words that come to mind are growth, development, play and observation.

My intention is to learn and be inspired to progress my illustrations into a portfolio that I can share with people in the industry.

Karen: Make it Doable.

It was wonderful to do a workshop with Karen again after last year's Sketchbook Revival which inspired my 100 Days of Circles sketching.

Penelope: Learn from your favourite illustrator's styles.

Again I am reminded that Richard Scarry was a childhood favourite and his books would help settle my mind and keep bad dreams at bay.

These days I love so many illustrators; Stephen Michael King, Julie Vivas, Anna Walker, Alison Lester, Anil Tortop, Tania McCartney, Katrin Dreiling and Russell Ayto to just name a few.

3D Character Head using Sculpey

Today with the help from illustrator Nina Rycroft and her Skillshare Class, How to Draw the Head from Every Angle - Part Two, I created my first 3D Sculpey character head.

This girl with ponytail is a little older than I was aiming for but it will still be useful in helping me draw faces. I will try to create a younger 3D character head sometime in the future.

Illustrations Revisited: Raining Cats and Dogs and Chickens

For a while now I have been wanting to do new versions of the Black & Illustrations that I showed last year's exhibition Story Time with SCBWI. So here they are; Raining Cats & Dogs II, Parachuting Hens II and Tightrope Hens II. I will be turning them into prints and cards shortly.

May Gibbs Touring Display Launch

The May Gibbs Touring Display from the State Library of NSW is currently showing at the Queanbyean Library until  9 August 2018 when it then move to other libraries in NSW.

The display celebrates a 100 years since May Gibbs' gum-nut babies were published and became part of our Australian literature culture that is still shared with children today. The display features many of her popular characters, books and costumes.

At last night's the launch, librarian Lynette Sebbens read the first chapter of Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie, giving the audience a taste of the fear and curiosity that these two characters felt about the creatures know as 'humans'.

The special guest at the launch was author and illustrator, Tania McCartney who has written and illustrated a book about a little girl called Mamie (HarperCollins, November 2018) whose story echoes the childhood of May Gibbs.

Inspirational Art at Handmade Canberra

I totted off to Handmade Canberra to be inspired. I was wanting to see what other artists were doing and also learn from and other stall holders about market stands.

It was delightful to feel the energy and joy from artists and designers that I talked to. To see how they created and what themes they created. I soaked in colours and lines and images. Looked at how themes can be the same but how people approach creating art about them differently.

The market helped me understand what styles draw in me and which styles just do not do it for me. It made me think about what I can envision my illustrations on and things I just would not be interested in.

These are some of the artists and images that called to my own creative spirit.

I met the shining personality of Amy Ranck from Outer Island whose ladybugs and mushrooms drew me in.

The animals of Red Parka created by Jennifer Cossins called to me, so I got some magnets. Her book A - Z of Endangered Animals was awarded a CBCA 2017 Honour Book for The Eve Pownall Award for Information Books.

Being an artist of black and white illustrations I had a fabulous chat with Paula Zetlein about her beautiful native plant illustrations and what materials and paper that she likes to use.

Cats in Bed - Drawing Lab

One of the new books that I bought recently was Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists by Carla Sonheim.

The first activity was to sketch lots of cats while in bed. I chose a few of my favourites and added water colour, pencil and ink to the illustrations. To see each cat illustration go to my Art Gallery.

My Practice Inspired by the Sketchbook Revival

Frenetic
Fun
Fabulous
Freeing

These four words are what I would use to describe my experience of the 2018 Sketchbook Revival: An Online Workshop created by Karen Abend.

It was quite a task to complete the 24 workshops that ran for two official weeks - with a 2 week catch up period. Each day there were two sessions to learn new techniques and mediums from a range of artist's that work towards sketching daily. Each session's video length was around one hour, so on top of the viewing time I spent extra time stopping and starting the videos, following the process to create my own sketchbook pages.
See my sketchbook revival creations later in this post.

Reflection On Workshop

It is now a few weeks since I finished the workshops and I'm really pleased that I took the time to immerse myself in developing my craft's; skills and techniques. Many of the workshops aligned with other creative practices that I am currently following ie: The Artist's Way by Julian Cameron and the Jen Storer's, Scribbles online creative writing course.

Freda Coyo Flamingo's Birthday

Say hello to Fredo Coyo.
She loves bright colours, celebrations and dancing the Paso Doble.

Freda is special because she has found a home with my friend, author and illustrator Tania McCartney for her 21 again birthday.

Freda is quite different to my usual paintings, she has embraced the bright colours and acrylic paints because she has such a lively personality.

Freda is my week 6 CDWC - long necked theme illustration.

Slinking Fox

Chickens still dominated my mind this last week.
My adventurous flock needed some down time at home.
But things are never as quite as you would like at home.
Today the slinking fox has decided to drop in for a visit.

This illustration focuses on the villain for Week 5 of the CDWC theme of Hero/Villain.

Jump

The theme of this week's Character Design Weekly Challenge is Jump/Stomp (Week 3).

I have illustrated a kangaroo jumping over the farm fence.

When my family lived on the farm I used to view this daily occurrence from the kitchen window.

This kitchen window view inspired the idea in my picture book ms of the little dog playing chases with the kangaroos.

Below are the individual images of each kangaroo illustration.

Toddler

This is my illustration for the Character Design Weekly Challenge Week 2: Toddler/Baby.

Over the last week I have been working my way through the Nina Rycroft online classes for faces and body proportions. While this illustration is still very static I am showing progress in being able to draw the face and proportions of the body. 

Plus I  have included one of the toy rabbits that I illustrated a few weeks ago.

I'm hoping the toddler with the toy rabbit will appear in the illustrations of the picture book that I am working on.

Those of you who are familiar with the coloured illustrations from the SCBWI 2017 Storytime Exhibition will notice that I have used the same colour palate for this toddler illustration.

Below is an image of my preparatory work for this illustration. I have used blue pencil as part of my initial sketching process. Utilising the teardrop shaped head and quartering line on the head for proportions of the face. I also draw in the skeleton and body to give the clothes some structure to hang on.

A Bunny Infestation in Leanne's Drawings

I have been surrounded by rabbits the last few weeks and they are multiplying.

Like in nature you begin with a few bunnies and then their numbers explode.

It began with my sister wishing for an Christmas Bunny. (5 rabbits)
It then spread into the PET theme for the first week of the Character Design Weekly Challenge. (17 more rabbits) Continuing through to the Nina Rycroft online classes, The Art of Bunnies in Books. (add 60 more rabbits)
A total of 82 rabbits in the last month.

Oh there was also copying 21 rabbit faces from picture books. I spent a morning looking at the shapes of difference rabbit character's faces.
Grand total of 103 rabbit drawings.

Plus the viewing of rabbit photos on Pixabay and rabbit videos from YouTube.

Cute Baby Wild Rabbits Discover Spring
Cute Wild Baby Rabbits want a Feed / Wildlife in My Backyard

Christmas Bunny

Week 1 PET
Character Design Weekly Challenge

Leanne's copies of Nina's Rabbit and Easter Celebration Illustrations

Leanne's Toy Rabbit Illustrations

Illustration of Characters During December

Part of my focus for 2018 is designing characters. I decided that I could begin the journey by developing characters from my draft picture book stories. 

First off the rank, even though it's December 2017, is my character development of Max, my little dog that has moved to live in a city apartment.

The next step in developing my characters is to participate in some of Nina Rycroft online classes.

I joined Skillshare after Christmas and I have been working on drawing bunnies.
I have been copying Nina's illustrations and drawing my own bunnies from reference photos.











It was suggested that maybe a bunny might make an appearance in Max's story, on the farm and/or as a city pet.