Village

More digital painting. I like little villages.

Reading

Just playing around with digital painting....

Alice in Wonderland redo

Long ago, (back in 2006!) when I was taking my first illustration for children class, I did an Alice in Wonderland piece for my portfolio.  I found that piece buried deep in the murky depths in my hard drive and decided to take another stab at it.

I kept some of the ink work from the original (albeit manipulated in Photoshop), changed the coloring, cleaned up the line work, re-painted Alice digitally, and cropped it. 

In the intervening years, I got a heck of a lot better at drawing and figured out how to use Photoshop much more effectively. (Draw every day. Seriously. It works.) Also I became obsessed with drawing hair. Having a Cintiq tablet also makes a huge difference in the ease of creating digitally (I HIGHLY recommend getting one. I love mine, totally worth it.)

She needs a bit of tweaking still, but I'm happy overall with the redo.  I wonder how much my style will change over the next 7 years.

The old piece:

Guest Post! Erika Barriga: Queen Quail is Quiet

 Today I'm happy to feature Erika Barriga, whose new book, Queen Quail is Quiet: and Other ABC Tongue Twisters, comes out today!  Her illustrations are truly delightful, and she was kind enough to stop by and share a bit of her process.

 

Queen Quail is Quiet: and other ABC Tongue Twisters came out today for e-readers for Kindle and in print!  Queen Quail is Quiet grew out of my love of learning and drawing.  I wanted to be a little different to approaching learning the alphabet. Creating a sentence illustrating each sound for every letter sounded challenging.  I started out by thinking of words for the letters and then forming a sentence I could illustrate.  Sketching of thumbnail ideas came next and was much easier to do once I realized this would no longer be just a project, but a book.  Most of the sketching was just on plain computer paper and once I refined the sketches into final artwork, I scanned in the images onto my computer.

The sketches were brought over to Adobe Illustrator as a layer.  Then I outlined everything in a bright color (easy to see and stands out) on another layer.  At this stage I think of colors and what would work for the entire book.

Then I made a copy of the outline layer and this is the layer that becomes the color layer.

Usually there is tweaking with the image just a bit (the swim cap for the duck is different from sketch to final), but I try to stay true to the original sketch since that is the foundation.  I believe it is better to sketch and erase than to work out those changes digitally on the computer. When the color is complete, I'll bring the image into Photoshop for additional little changes and finally end with applying a texture.
This book took over four years to complete from start to finish and I can't wait for my baby girl to flip through the pages.  I hope other kids will enjoy it too!

Delinquent Goldilocks

Delinquent Goldilocks came up recently from two different people I know, in two unrelated conversations.  So, here's my version.

5 legged dinosaur

The rare and mysterious 5 legged dinosaur.

You are doing fine

A hand lettered sign for those moments when you are freaking out.

Also available as wallpaper and a printable here: http://aeolidia.com/blog/2013/05/you-are-doing-fine-free-printable-by-aeolidia/

How to draw a bicycle

A little something I learned at the recent SCBWI Western Washington conference.

Announcement! I have an agent!

 

I'm pretty sure that designing this announcement was not a good use of my time.

NEVERTHELESS!

I now have an agent! I am represented by Alexandra Penfold at Upstart Crow Literary!