Saturday, August 7, 2010

Lavender Blue - Layout 1

A couple of final layouts for the Lavender Blue Faerie Tale I'm working on. These will be traced straight on to the watercolour paper that I will be doing the final illustration on. The layouts were done in coloured pencil so that I could quickly jot done the colour ideas I was getting while drawing and also because the soft prisma colour pencils glide so pleasingly over the slightly toothy sketch book paper. The only problem with these  pencils is that you can't really erase them. I tend to use them like watercolour - starting with the light tones and putting the darks down last. I don't usually put a lot of detail into these layouts because I like to save as much creative energy as possible for the painting. The problem now is having to wait the weeks or months it will take before I can finally paint them and spend that pent up energy.

The first picture comes about half way through the story where Lavender encounters what she thinks is a unicorn but which in fact turns out to be a dangerous, shape shifting pookah, fully intent on harming her. The second picture is actually the first illustration in the story where we see Lavender cutting roses in her garden, blissfully unaware of the dangerous adventure into the faerie realm she is about to take.

8 comments:

Marc Hudgins said...

Have you ever tried Col-Erase pencils? The erase really well (as the name suggests).They don't have the color range of a box of Prismalcolors,they only have a bout 24 colors max, but they do erase and you can use a little water with them to get a watercolory effect and they blend and smudge nicely. I started using them as an animator and use them still to this day for just about any kind of drawing.

Larry MacDougall said...

Hey Marc

It's been a long time since I've tried the Col-Erase pencils although my wife uses them often. Years ago I used to find that the animation pencils used to get these annoying little white specs in the lead that would cause the pencil to skip and scratch. It was then that I stopped using them. I should try them again. I'm not really looking for a wide colour range - just something to draw with.

Craig Phillips said...

Great! I LOVE the first one. I love the way the unicorn is standing behind the tree. He looks a little shifty to me! Thats a really nice magical composition. Cant wait to see more!

btw , is this your own project? or is someone else writing it.

Unknown said...

Both of these images are enchanting, more so for the up and down geography - particularly in her front garden. It makes for a really interesting composition and keeps just enough hidden that you wonder what you would see if you wandered around the corner of her cottage. Great stuff, Larry.

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Larry MacDougall said...

Thanks Craig :)

This is not my project. It was written by Steve Richardson at Impossible Dreams Publishing. It feels like my project though - it's such a perfect story for me.

Larry MacDougall said...

Thanks Andy - it was very kind of you to say that. My favourite pictures are the ones that just give you a taste. Then it's up to you to fill in the blanks - much appreciated :)

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