Tag: illustration prompt

Inktober 2020 #5 – Blade

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Today we have sabre drill. A girl practicing fencing with her coach. The prompt was blade. I took the time to do comic book style shading and highlights this time.

I did my best to get the lunge position and the clothing correct. My husband fences, so I got a bit of advice from him on that. The coach is based very roughly on his coach and this drill is very common for beginning sabre fencers.

Sabre is the hack and slash style of fencing. Foil and epee are the pokey styles. My daughter is deeply disappointed I drew sabre instead of epee. She thinks epee is the best. But sabre just doesn’t have as nice a sound effect. SMACK!

A girl practicing sabre drills with her fencing coach. She is performing a strike-to-head which makes a "SMACK!" sound and her coach says, "Good!"

Inktober 2020 #4 – Radio

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Today’s prompt was radio, so these two aliens are groov’in to earth music in their flying saucer.

Two aliens dancing to Earth music on the radio in their flying saucer.

Inktober 2020 #3 – Bulky

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This is a more traditional Inktober style for me. More pure black and pure white than the grays from the last two pieces. So, this boy’s lifting a bulky backpack. I didn’t get it quite as silly and exaggerated as I wanted to, but I’m calling it done.

A boy shoulders a huge, bulky backpack. It's gaping open and looks like everything's about to fall out.

Inktober 2020 #2 – Wisp

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The folklore around will ‘o the wisps is that they lure nighttime travelers out into the swamp where they get lost, sometimes forever. So, here’s a naughty little will ‘o the wisp luring a boy into trouble.

A will 'o the wisp lights up a swampy nighttime forest. A boy is following it.

Inktober 2020 #1 – Fish

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So, I thought I’d see if I can get through an entire Inktober series again this year.  Last time I did it was in 2016, but I ignored the official prompts in favor of whatever Halloween ideas came to mind.  This time I’m following the official prompts, which means today is: Fish.

A cartoon shark floating in the ocean.

I’m not entirely following the official rules because Inktober is really supposed to be ink drawings. But I only draw digital. So… no ink in the house. Instead I’m going to approximate ink drawings by limiting myself to black and white and trying to do mostly ink-style drawings at least. This one isn’t very ink-style, though.

Hey, it’s the best I can do. 🙂

My Entry for the Tomie dePaola Award

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Here is my entry for the Tomie dePaola Illustration Award given by the SCBWI. The prize is a trip to New York to attend the SCBWI winter conference, lunch with Tomie dePaola (he’s been an illustrator for over 40 years and illustrated nearly 250 books), and some sort of little award presentation. Getting Ready in the Morning The prompt was:

Visual sequence is key to conveying feeling, action, storyline, interest and character, especially in children’s book illustration. One of the hardest things to do is to know your character so well—what he, she, or it looks like, how they move, how they project emotion, and at the same time to make the character immediately recognizable and consistent —all without resorting to a generic depiction, but making sure your character has charm, individuality and special qualities that make young readers fall in love with them. All of this is the same whether your character is human, animal, and yes, even vegetable! (Maybe inanimate as well) The task is to create a six-panel sequence that has a beginning, middle and an end that is obvious, featuring a character of your own invention. It can be funny, sad, dramatic or ordinary, but interesting and with lots of invention and finesse.

So, this piece was designed to be a bit of a sampler. It has close views and distant views, a variety of expressions, a couple of challenging poses, a consistently drawn character (I hope!), and a bit of humor in an otherwise ordinary daily routine.

The girl is biracial because biracial children are under-represented in children’s literature and it allowed me to have her really fighting with her hair in panel 3. Two birds, one stone.

The monster is there because I had some empty space in the panels and it added humor and complexity. And I was a little bored.  Hopefully, though the series has a clear conclusion, you’re still left wondering, just a little, what’s the deal with the monster?

This is merely round 1 of a two-part contest. The second part won’t be announced until the 10 finalists are chosen. Wish me luck!

Update:
I didn’t get into the semi-finals, which is disappointing.  They showed the semi-final entries, and I think most of them were better than most of the ones for last year’s prompt.  So, congrats to everyone who entered and made it into the second round!

For future reference:
I think this competition is looking for illustrations targeting the preschool age range and he likes humorous, whimsical illustrations.  I think I should have entered a reformatted version of this or a colored, more finished version of this and I might have done better.