The Making of a Self Portrait

Last year I started a new yearly tradition - a birthday self portrait! If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen the post I made about this, but there's more to the story...

When I was in college I had a really great drawing and illustration professor. The kind who was not only a super talented artist in his own right, but he also was a fantastic TEACHER, and really cared about us as students. He spent the 1980s living in New York City working his tail off as a professional illustrator, doing a lot of editorial work and magazine covers. These were, of course, the days before digital art was a thing. He told us stories of pounding the pavement, hauling his physical portfolio around the city to meet with art directors, and working under very tight schedules to deliver his work before the print deadlines. It sounded SO STRESSFUL. We were the lucky ones who landed in his classes and got to learn from him.

We did a lot of figure drawing, as is common in university drawing classes. I remember many times struggling with drawing a foot or a hand, because you know, those are hard to get right. He would always ask before helping out, but I loved when he would take my pencil, and down in the lower corner of my page would whip out a few effortless simple lines, PERFECTLY representing that foot or hand. It was like magic. But really it was because he'd had A LOT of practice, which he reminded us of constantly.

One day toward the end of the semester he brought in a neatly bound handmade package. At the end of class he began to lay the contents out on the table, and he asked us to gather around. It contained a stack of his own artwork - a series of self portraits. Some painted with gouache, some were oil or acrylic paintings. Probably 25 or 30 of them. In each one he was wearing the same black button-up shirt, and they were all dated on the same day, each a year apart. We suddenly realized that the date on all of the paintings was that current day, AND he was wearing that same black shirt. It turned out that it was his BIRTHDAY, and every year on his birthday he makes a self portrait. He said, “I’m going home right now to make this year’s portrait!” We were awestruck and DELIGHTED. It was such a neat thing to see all of his portraits together, to see him change as a person, and also to see his style and skill as an artist evolve and grow. Seeing the entire collection together was impressive. It was a visual timeline of his life, and a documentation of his evolution as an artist.

Every year on my birthday I remember this story, and I think that I should start that tradition for myself. So, last year I did, and hopefully I can keep it up in future years!

I decided to keep the first one fairly simple. A drawing in procreate with a limited color palette - three colors. I only used three brushes as well.

This self portrait is set in my studio - me at my drawing desk. The fun part was deciding what to include in the image - that might have some significance and add to the "story." There are a few things of note, that I thought you might enjoy reading about, so I made you a diagram. More detailed descriptions are below the image...

1. My drawing table is against a west facing window. In the late afternoon I get some nice warmth streaming into the room. It also means the bright light can make it difficult to concentrate and see the work in front of me, so I take it as a cue to get up and go outside and go for a walk, or workout, and get away from my desk.

2. A beaver. I am currently wrapping up a big illustration project - a children's book about BEAVERS. Just a nod to what I've been spending so much time on.

3. Several years ago I made a small painting of my grandma based on an old photograph of her from the 1940's. It's been pinned to my wall ever since.

4. Carson Ellis is a favorite illustrator, and I love this print of hers. I use it as a reminder not to get caught up on things from the past, or to worry too much about current frustrations. Just keep moving onward.

5. I have a big calendar on my wall that shows the entire year. Very useful for visualizing big projects, and deadlines.

6. An old manual pencil sharpener. I found it at an antique shop, and put it up on my wall. It works like a CHAMP.

7. I like to wear stripes.

8. My grandma gave me this green glass apple paperweight. It sat on her desk in her house for as long as I can remember. I have very early memories - just a snapshots in my mind really - of it glowing under a beam of sunlight streaming in through the window. When she downsized and moved out of her house it was really the only thing that I wanted. She recently told me that it was gift from a painting student of hers. An apple for the teacher. She will be 102 years old in July.

9. A cushioned comfortable chair, because I spend more time than I would like to sitting.

10. I do have piles of things scattered around. This drawing makes it look much more organized than it actually is.

11. Many many drawing and painting utensils. My current favorite is the Blackwing Pearl pencil. So soft and smooth and perfect.  And, yes, I guess my apple pencil is right up there with the favorites too!

12. This one is very important. I have a desktop drawing board that tilts at an angle. I found out the hard way that looking straight down for hours a day is NO GOOD for my neck. This thing has saved me. I also prop my iPad on it when I'm using it for an extended time. Five stars. Definitely recommend.

This was such a fun thing to do, and I'm already looking forward to the next one, which will be here before I know it. Why does time move SO fast???

The Secret Signs of Nature - Building a Book

Earlier this year my first illustrated kid’s book hit the shelves. If you are interested in how a book like this comes to be, here is a little insight into how it played out for this one…

The Secret Signs of Nature was released in mid-May of 2022, and it was my biggest project to date. I'm now able to see and appreciate how much work it was, and how much I learned and grew throughout the process. I'll try to keep this somewhat succinct, as there is SO much I could say.

I started work on the book way back in October of 2020. Yes, publishing timelines are long! It was peak pandemic time, and I was so thankful to have found a project that would allow me to put my head down and just get lost. Even years from now when I go back and look at this book I will probably think about the pandemic and about what a strange time it was!

I worked with Magic Cat Publishing to bring this book to life, and they were wonderful - especially my art director, Nicola. She was super patient and did a great job of guiding me throughout the entire process. The book was written by Craig Caudill, a master naturalist and outdoor educator, and just all around expert in wilderness survival. A very cool guy. It's a non-fiction book all about using nature's hidden clues to navigate and find our way. In other words - it's how to let nature be our guide. I was pretty excited to take on the project, as it was right up my alley. That's not to say I wasn't also intimidated by the scope of it, because I ABSOLUTELY was. More on that later!

The art director and I started off with a bit of back and forth conversation about layout and style, and how we wanted to approach incorporating the text into the visuals. It was clear from the start that this book would be FULL of information, and my illustrations needed to accurately show the concepts that were being presented, but also - it's a kid's book - so let's make it fun and colorful and something that a kid would want to spend hours taking in every little detail. But...no pressure. And, yes this was also the point in which I started to feel a little bit overwhelmed. If I thought too far ahead that's when I got that imposter syndrome/intimidated feeling, so throughout the entire process my mindset was to just take it one day and one step at a time. It was one of those "it's a marathon not a sprint" situations.  

If I could sum up the process of illustrating a book, at least this one, I would describe it as solving a very big and complicated puzzle. Here is how it went...

I would get a brief for each spread of the book. A brief is a list of what should be included in the illustration, time of day, setting, characters, text/information etc. and a short description of what they are looking for. This would also include a folder of digital images that I could use as reference material. Each spread of this book takes place in a different location around the world. I was familiar with some of the plants and animals and landscapes, but others were new to me. So, I also needed to do a lot of my own research to familiarize myself with some of the things that I would be drawing. 

Next my task was to do a rough sketch for the spread. This was the part where I actually felt like I was trying to solve a puzzle. I needed to figure out an eye-pleasing composition that addressed every component listed in the brief. Sometimes these came together somewhat easily, but other times it was a struggle, and took many attempts to get right. It was always a bit of a relief to finally figure out a good composition that checked all the boxes. I did these sketches on my iPad in Procreate, which was great because I could go back and re-arrange elements, and change things without any trouble.  Here are what a couple of the sketches looked like...

The one thing that threw me off sometimes was that I was drawing on a small screen, but the illustration would exist much bigger in real life. I ended up printing out my sketches at full size just to make sure everything would make sense and look correct when it was reproduced in the book. Here's a stack of those...

I pinned them up on my studio wall as I was working. They became a good visual for me to see just how much I had accomplished as I went along - and that was nice to have next to me every day.

When the sketch/composition was approved, I was then able to go ahead and take that idea to full color and create the final piece of artwork for the book. Sounds simple, but there were a MILLION little decisions to make and problems to solve along the way. 

I ended up deciding to create the illustrations with a combination of traditional materials and digital techniques. All of the line work in the book was drawn with traditional pencil on paper - Blackwing Pearl pencils on Strathmore Marker paper to be exact. I liked that combination of soft graphite on smooth paper. 

I didn't draw each spread in one whole piece. Instead I drew some of the elements separately, so for each spread I ended up with a little stack of drawings, like these...

I then scanned those drawings and compiled them into the correct composition for each spread, using Photoshop. Here's an example from the page about Mushrooms...

Doing the line work first gave me a good structure for the illustration. Then I transferred that back over to my iPad where I added color and texture using Procreate. I really like the intuitiveness of Procreate, and the the quality of the brushes.  It worked great for me for the color stage, and because I did this part on the iPad I wasn't tied to my desk. I know you probably have a lot of questions about this color step. Color is a beast, and can be complicated, so for the sake of succinctness I won’t go into it here, but let’s talk about that in a later post.

Before sending the final artwork to my publisher, I did some fine tuning and clean up of the files in Photoshop. 

There are twenty-five of these big, full-color, two page spreads in the book, as well as some information in the front and back. Phew! It was a lot.

The very last step that I completed to finish up the book was to design the endpapers - the pages that make up the insides of the front and back covers. This was actually one of my favorite parts of the whole project - maybe because it signaled the end, and a huge accomplishment - but I love endpapers. They seem to just wrap up a book perfectly. A little design element that ties into the package, but isn't really part of the story. They're like putting a bow on top of a present. The perfect finishing touch. I have so many old vintage children's books with great endpapers, so this was a treat for me. I ended up creating a repeating pattern in greens that included some plants and animals and natural elements from the book, and I think it works perfectly...

I’ve been working on directing my career towards book illustration, so taking on this project was right in line with where I'd like to be - but it still was a little bit scary jumping into this role never having illustrated an entire book before. At the outset, as I was trying to figure out my process, and how to streamline my workflow for efficiency sake, I was a little bit concerned that the first pages I created would look vastly different from the later ones. I kind of knew that as I settled in I would get better as the book progressed. Internally, from my perspective, that did happen. I got more comfortable with what I was doing, and just from sheer repetition and time spent on it I found a groove toward the middle that I didn't have at the beginning. I'm sure on big projects most illustrators experience that to a certain extent, but hopefully in future projects that gap will start to get smaller and fade away. And hopefully to the reader, or the untrained eye (anyone else but me) won't be able to see it. 

That was a whirlwind! I know. Thanks for reading! If you want your own copy of The Secret Signs of Nature, you can find it here!