Mirror Sight: UK edition cover released!

This cover has been done for quite some time now, but Orion Publishing Group has the cover art posted on their site, so I figured it was time I did the same!

Graphite on bristol vellum on a 14 x 17 sheet. More work pending!

Song of the North

So to retest my digital painting skills and try out newly downloaded brushes, I decided to paint one of my favorite "summertime" birds, the white-throated sparrow. Hearing their song takes me on a trip to the north woods, camping under the stars amidst pine and birch, and waking up with the sun to hear these birds singing endlessly, amidst the branches and just out of sight, or so it is with my blurry morning eyes. 

I used a photo taken by David Speiser for reference, as I wanted to actually use my eyes accurately for once. It's not 100% the same as the photo, though I did my best to capture the appearance and markings of the species. The photo can be found at his gallery here.

Photoshop CS3, Wacom bamboo tablet. Hopefully the new year will bring more bird art!

Foolhardy Quest

"Foolhardy Quest" Watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and ink on Fabriano 140 lb hot press watercolor paper, 14 x 20" (35.56 x 50.8 cm) 

Finally, after nearly a month of straight painting in my free time, I have completed this piece, which I had showed a color sketch of earlier this year. Things changed quite a bit in terms of color, but I think for the better. 95% was painted using watercolors, with final adjustments in acrylic, gouache, and white ink. 

Bretonnian knights may not be the wisest, but they don't lack courage! The serpent was based on traditional sea serpent imagery, combined with the bioluminescence, jaws, and teeth of deep sea species while the orange fins were inspired by oarfish. (Which was said to have inspired the sea serpent legend in the first place!)

I'm planning on submitting this for this year's Spectrum, so wish me luck!

California Condor: Finished

"Fate of the Condor" 9x12" on cold pressed 140 lb watercolor paper. Watercolor, powdered graphite, charcoal, india ink, acrylic, and white acrylic ink.

I went with a less controlled approach for this piece, and relied on the wide variety of materials to bring their own character into the process. Of course, I wanted to bring a clearer detail to the condor's face, and further accentuated that with the sky halo about its head.

As a bonus, I will share some pictures I took as the painting progressed. A thousand apologies for the rather subpar lighting and inevitable blur that resulted! 

It's come a long way from the original sketch (thank goodness!) and turned out quite decently.

California Condor: Work in Progress

A preliminary sketch for a painting that I am contributing for a Kickstarter project, "Losing Altitude." The project is an illustrated collaboration from many artists featuring a large variety of endangered and threatened bird species from around the globe. You can find the project here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/animuspanthera/losing-altitude-a-collaborative-art-book?ref=live

Condors may be considered ugly by some, but I'll never see them as less than the magnificent birds they are.

Website Now Live!

I've decided to get a little help with self promotion and advertising this year (and next year, actually) by going through Serbin Communication's publication, the Directory of Illustration. As a result, I also have a more finished gallery where I can post work in a slightly more organized fashion. Check it out here: http://aprilillustration.com/

I've been a bit busy as of late with moving and trying to get set up in the new house, so new art has been a bit slow. Long commutes and excessive cleaning take a lot of hours out of the day, it would seem. Hopefully I can get past this phase soon and get back to work!

Life of Pi

Here's a cover concept for Yann Martel's "Life of Pi." I tried to take a more metaphorical/conceptual approach to illustrating this, where the boat, ocean, tiger, and Pi are helplessly connected in their own universe. This was an excellent color exercise, and I worked to create a slightly different style while I was at it. 

Watercolor on coldpress 140 lb watercolor paper.

Adelaide: Refinished

It's good to revisit old works, time and again. I underwent such a project recently, the painting a 5 year old college project that was leaving many things to be desired. Thankfully, I was able to renew at least a small portion of it! 

The original is a far more complex piece, in watercolor and acrylic. Retouching/repainting was done in Photoshop CS3 with a Wacom Bamboo tablet.

Personal Novel Project: Now With Color!

I posted the original pencil sketch of this several months back, and decided to revisit it recently with some digital color. This was the end result, which I think turned out pretty well. I think my current digital method really benefits from having traditional materials as a large part of the finished piece, in this case, somewhat rendered pencils. I like that raw texture to come through in the original, as it gives the painting a more honest and tactile feel than say, a fully polished digital painting. But that's just my humble opinion.

As for Adelaide, our young heroine, she'll be quite alright after she gets over her fright. Lucky doesn't even begin to cover it!

Characters, creature concepts, and art © April Schumacher.

Foolhardy Defense Color Sketch

Sometimes, it's a good idea to throw together a color study before proceeding from sketch to finished piece. And by sometimes, I mean always. It's just I wouldn't recommend getting so carried away with one color concept, if you can help it.

(Un)fortunately, I can't take my own advice, and what was meant to be a quick digital color scribble evolved into the following: 

Bretonnian knights errant can be foolhardy at times, though I suppose if a sea serpent wrecks enough ships and eats enough people, one might need to (try) to do something about it!

Photoshop CS3, Wacom Bamboo tablet, and various teas and coffee for fuel. Art © April Schumacher. All rights reserved.

Kelpie

A spontaneous project that I somehow managed to complete, despite the fact that I had little idea as to what I wanted for a final product. I would like to push my work a little more into stylized territory, but for now have some more "semi-realism" or whatever you'd like to call it.

I'd done many sketches of the mythical kelpie in the past, and always like the idea of a more or less approachable looking horse: Except, of course, for that terrifying, rotting skeletal head and writhing kelp-like... appendages? The (careless) victims don't know what they're sitting on until it's too late. How unpleasant!

Derwent Graphitint pencils, watercolor, and acrylic on Stonehenge, 4.75 x 10".

Happy Holidays!

"Winter Whitetail" 8x10 inch (20 x 25 cm) acrylic, ink, and pyrography on basswood panel.

Something fitting for the holiday season. Here's to a bright 2013!

Self Motivation: Now in Poster Form!

Everyone needs encouragement every now and again. Right? I decided that I would have a little fun in the midst of things, and made myself a motivational poster after being inspired by friends' ideas. This was the humorous result:

The line art was inked by hand, with color added digitally in Photoshop CS3. I quite enjoyed this color palette, to be honest. Nice and bold!

Red Stag: Revisited

A couple of years ago I painted "Red Stag" to be sold. I decided to follow some good advice and add more color, thus making the piece a bit more dynamic. Here's the end result:

I feel the green tones help the piece read better at a distance, something that was nigh impossible with the first version. Finally something that isn't more or less monochromatic!

Boar of the Woods

More pyrography/art for sale, as promised in my last post. Since I liked the initial (woodburned) stages of this so much, I scanned it separate so I could at least have a file of just the woodburned lines before going on to finish. I decided not to go the usual forest creature route (deer, owls, foxes, wolves, squirrels, etc.) and chose a wild boar. I gave him a little portable ecosystem to carry on his back.

Here is the piece with woodburned lines only. This piece (quite possibly due to the nature of the wood I was working on) was quite agreeable, and I made no glaring mistakes with the woodburning tool.

Here is the final outcome. The first layer (admittedly a bit of a mistake) was a non-waterproof sepia ink, which has a heavy red pigment to it. The darker areas were added with a more brown sepia acrylic ink, and for the highlights I used white acrylic paint.

I have one more older piece on wood to touch up, and then I'll be back to portfolio projects, etc. 

Pyrography: The Sentinel (Great Horned Owl)

So I've been striving to make the best of my final year participating as an alumni at MCAD's annual Art Sale. (16th and 17th of November this year.) I find that I have less luck with larger works during these past few years, so have decided to produce things on a smaller scale. Yet, for all their relatively small size, they still take at least 8-15 hours to produce.

I've found I still have some spare basswood left over from other endeavors, so thought it'd be as good an excuse as any to work with the woodburning tool. 

People still like owls, right? I'll be uploading the progress shots on the other woodburned/painted pieces once I finish them up, which should be soon. 

Current Project: Sneak Peek

Feeling a little slow as of late, even though I've been working on a larger project for a couple of weeks straight. It started out roughly, since I was transferring the original sketch to the final format via grid, and somehow my grid was slightly off and ended up distorting the first attempt. NOT PRETTY.  Then my current attempt accidentally ended up on a less desirable bristol vellum than usual, but I made do.

Since I can't show you the full image for a while now, this little snippet will have to suffice:

I will probably find plenty of things wrong with the final for me to fix, but I've got time for that, thankfully.

Dia-BEE-tus

It's actually been a good chunk of time since I worked with my acrylics. To save more important projects from being butchered by a rusty hand, I made a little painting of a bumblebee... With diabetes? Perhaps I'm not so good with puns.

On the other hand, it turned out alright. Golden OPEN acrylics are fairly forgiving, though they do get quite sticky if you take a bit of a break. Also, I feel that I need to push the boundary between stylization and semi-realism in my work. That's what experimentation is for, I suppose.

Personal Novel Project: Some Snippets

It's been entirely too long since my last post. I hope to rectify that by posting more on works in progress during the next few months, provided I have anything new/of interest to show.  For now, I'll make do by showing a few of the sketches and concepts I've been doing for my (likely) lifelong personal project, an illustrated short novel. I wish I had more time to write these days, but alas! No go.

The last image is one of the few digital experiments I've done. I just don't find the medium as satisfying as traditional, but we'll see if that doesn't change in the future.

Oldies but Goodies

Here's a collection of older works I still enjoy, which is a pretty big rarity for me. With luck, these will remind me of the things I've liked most about past works, and what I should continue to hold on to as I evolve. Hopefully I'll move into bolder territories this upcoming year, and challenge old fears. Like backgrounds! Ha!