Whacky November

It's wednesday! What better day than this one to post about Watercolor Wednesdays?

WaWe is a community blog dedicated to illustrations for kids, every month features a new banner rendered by one of it's members, this was the one I did for Nov 2012.

And recently I stepped in to do the March 2013, it'll be up all month so check it by clicking the button in the right side menu  --->

I'm sometimes asked what steps I take when illustrating, this particular one is a good one to use since it was done in my 'standard' method...

1&2) Once I've sketched out the idea (which I couldn't find to post here) I ink it, sometimes right over the original pencils, but mostly on a clean sheet of paper using a lightbox.

3) Then, on another clean sheet I watercolour the bits I consider 'positive space'.

4) After scanning and aligning the bits, an overall texture is added and any missing details are filled in.

5) The background is then filled in using more textures, sometimes adding some last minute details.

The last step is to add the lettering and some spin-n-shine finishing touches (top image)

Olympic heroes

The big story at the moment is the one involving our very own Oscar Pistorius, aka the "blade runner", olympic sweetheart and national hero...

While he is mired in controversy and his innocence is up for debate, I'm not here to flaunt my opinion, instead I'd like to remind all of us that we have many other heroes worthy of our attentions.

   

These were commissioned by Nasou Via Afrika and feature Semanya Caster and Cameron van der Burgh, some of last year's medal takers at the London Olympics.

Due to time constraints, I've had to work more and more digitally. These didn't even have rough drafts, the briefs were very clear and I was able to go straight to the final piece, sometimes the results surprised even me... it's nice when that happens :)

wearing Blake's shoes

Here are a couple more illustrations for Cambridge University Press based on Quentin Blake's style.

I call the top one "iClean" :)

wearing Blake's hat

As an illustration gun-for-hire, or more accurately: pencil-box-for-hire, I am at times asked to emulate iconic styles. There are few illustrators as iconic as the legendary Quentin Blake, who famously drew Roald Dahl's classic masterpieces, too numerous to single out here.

His site is full of wonderful things, I highly recomend having a look at it,  my favourite being this gem - the master at work. I also found this lovely blog article about him and his landscapes.

I was commissioned by Cambridge University Press to adopt Mr Blake's style because they had used an extract of "Danny, champion of the world" in their Grade 7, English language schoolbooks.
I enjoyed the style so much that I used it throughout the Grd7 material I was assigned!

This last panel comes from Danny, I drew on Roald Dahl's own gipsy caravan for inspiration...

Imagine owning your very own gipsy caravan!

nomnomnom...

Like every other human, I like food. It makes me happy when I'm sad and full when I'm hungry.

I recently illustrated a series of plates for House&Leisure magazine, the "Food Issue" which you'll find on magazine racks across SA.

You can download the full large format versions from their site.

Bon Appétit!

splishy splashing!

Let's dive into the new year!

New friends to be made, new adventures to be found and more fun to be had!

festive dassie

Happy Holidays everybody!