The ups and downs of creativity!

As you can see, my last post was at the beginning of January, the 1st to be exact, and here I am now at the end of February. I even wrote a reminder in my calendar book to post before the end of the month. I Guess I am cutting it as close as possible. I am pleased to say I've been working at my next submission, and thinking about sending a second hit to Highlights. This project is a poem and 4 pics. The poem came rather easily, thank goodness, because the illustrations have been a re-learning experience, interesting and frustrating all in one. As for the writing part; I love when a character comes out of nowhere, and then it becomes a part of you. I find creativity such a mystery sometimes, at least when I stop long enough to think about it.

It's been a long time since I have interpreted text to illustrate. That part went smoothly. I knew the pieces and parts I wanted to highlight, and being that I intend this for a magazine format I wanted to do 4 spot illustrations. So as I’m getting into it, I’m thinking that the drawing end of it was going to be the most time consuming. And maybe it was? I should have tracked my time for future reference. Mental note on that.

In any case the drawing and creating of the characters was in fact more second nature than getting into the nitty-gritty of color. I was so excited about doing the color end. I had a certain look in my mind on how the illustrations should be and a consistent flow I wanted to achieve. So here I am approaching the color end of this, and I find myself stalling, doing other things, and then coming back to it, picking at it, and so on. Then there was experimentation with different paper surfaces and mediums. I was originally planning on watercolor, only to discover how out of practice I was. Then the paper... first watercolor, then cold press, bristol board--bad! I experimented with different lines and marker so on so forth. Frustration mounting--then, I finally came home, just like riding a bike as they say. Hot press with watercolor pencil. Like a long lost love! Then the joy of applying the color! Fun! Finally! Yay! Can you tell I’m happy?

So today I decided to take a break, post a post and scan some of the pics. Below is one of the pieces from start to finish. I may still tweak the little guy. All in all it was good to be figuring this all out and shaking off some of the dust!

On another note: I would like to welcome my friend Linda Hensley to the blogging community. She and I have been friends since 7th grade. We have shared the love of art for many years. We have worked together as artists and have enjoyed personal creative endeavors together. Welcome Linda!