Illustration Friday: STRIPES

I love incorporating patterns into my illustrations! Polka dots, stripes, and plaids have been sort of a trademark of my work. A few years ago I wrote and illustrated a children's picture book, and went pretty wild on the wardrobe patterns of the characters. When I sent it proudly to an agent friend of mine to critique she pointed out to me that because of all these details it was too busy, and therefore difficult to focus on. After looking at it with fresh eyes I saw what she was talking about. I ended up ditching some of the characters, and toning down the dress. Here are the before and after illustrations. . . as you can see, I took out some, but gave the main character his stripes! There's something about those lines that I just can't resist....

Before

After

SCARY: Illustration Friday

I didn't have the time to do more than a line pencil drawing for the assigned word this week, so this is it. The idea popped into my mind after helping my daughter, Katy, to decorate her house this Halloween. She has some very scary animated witches and ghosts - topped off by the towering Grim Reaper, and she put them ALL around. I was surprised when I witnessed her 15 month old baby girl giggle when she got close to any of them! .... versus my grandsons, who ran screaming for shelter when they were her age! "I don't want Delaney to be afraid of them, so I make it like they're funny when they do their scary thing." she explained..... and it worked! So, the idea of drawing a tough little fairy princess standing up to the howling ghost sort of captured that scenario for me.