So I was scrolling through tumblr today and I came across a post linking to this tweet. It’s a video of a truly adorable little umbrella octopus with little ear-like flaps on top of it’s head. I think it’s called a Dumbo Octopus. Anyway, I was inspired to draw it.
I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find the Illustration Friday topic to be the one I suggested recently. I think I suggested it last week or the week before. And, yes, it’s mine because I was cited as the one who suggested it. It’s a little thing, but isn’t it cool?
So, that’s why my hits are unusually high today and probably will be all week. Yay! Welcome everyone from IF. Feel free to take a look around the site and comment on things. Make yourselves at home. Follow me if you like.
But now I’m sitting here with MY illustration topic as the one for the week. Which means I really should post something good. Initially I suggested the topic after photographing this image:
I really liked it and I thought “water” would make a great topic. But it’s hardly an illustration, is it? Well, maybe a photo illustration. Not exactly what Illustration Friday is all about, though.
I could also post one of several other water-related images I’ve created in the past.
Or I could point to the series of Rocks and Water photographs I took in Wisconsin this summer.
I really would like to give IF something new, though. Perhaps I could finish off this sketch which I started for the IF topic of “carry” but never finished.
Really, though, I’m afraid I won’t work on anything for IF because this week I have THINGS TO DO. The kids are off school several days in the coming week, I have to send out Halloween-themed art samples to potential clients before the end of the month, I need to meet with a web design client sometime next week, and I’m preparing all my stuff for the SCBWI conference on the 27th. I’m busy.
So, it may turn out that this week I’ll have nothing new to contribute to IF, even though Penelope was kind enough to choose my topic.
This week’s Illustration Friday prompt was jump. I was going to just repost my lovely swimmer children. But, then I decided to do a little more. For those of you who saw the work in progress sketches for these two, you might remember that these were not created for the same scene. But I decided to change that and combine them into one scene formatted for a magazine cover. So, I added a background and mocked up graphics for a Highlights Magazine. So, here’s the plain image and the Highlights mock-up below. Let me know what you think. 
I am not in any way affiliated with Highlights Magazine and this is not a real Highlights cover. Only an art sample.
Here’s the finished version. The first sketch showed him in mid-air over the water, as if caught in mid-leap. Once I drew it, I decided he kind of looked like he was already in the water. I think it would work either way, but I already did a mid-leap image last time. I thought drawing bubbles in this would be fun, so I put him underwater. Same font as the other one: Komika Boo.
I think this is the final version. I’ll need to double-check the colors on my other computer, but it’s getting late tonight. I’ll just post it as-is. If the colors look a bit too bright, blame it on my laptop. I’ll make adjustments tomorrow if it needs it.
The font is a distorted, gradient-overlaid, embossed version of Komika Boo, by Larry Yerkes. That’s a free font I got from some free font site. I’d put a link to the author’s Myspace site, but I looked at it and, YIKES. Not linking directly to that. But feel free to put his name into Google and find him if you want. He goes by WolfBainX.
Anyhow, here’s the image:
Karen B. Jones - Illustrator 