Author Archives: Rob

It’s A Sunny Life Line Art

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As I’ve mentioned before, all my illustration work begins as black and white line art before I add the color. So I draw with the intent to color, obviously, but I love it when I can get the ink drawings to stand on their own as good drawings without the color added. Sometimes, the artwork falls flat without color. Other times, it just shines and I regret that no one will get to see it in the uncolored form. With “It’s A Sunny Life,” I was thrilled with the line art on nearly every page. So I thought I’d show off some of the inked artwork. This work was all done on Bristol paper with my trusty Rapidograph pens and PITT brush pen (although I did cheat and draw the snow in Photoshop on one page.)

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It’s a Sunny Life Process

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I always enjoy showing off my artistic process, so I hope you don’t mind if I show off how I created a double page spread for my new book “It’s A Sunny Life.” I began with a rough pencil drawing. The grey clouds were added in Photoshop as a time saver.
SunnyLife_Process_roughAfter the rough sketch was approved by the publisher, I printed it out (with the approximate text placement) in blue onto 11×17 Bristol paper.

Why print it in blue? I can easily remove the blue line from the page in Photoshop. I also redrew some elements I wasn’t pleased with with a blue pencil. If you look closely, you’ll notice the extra blue pencil lines in the dog’s body and paws. I then drew the final linework in ink.
SunnyLife_Process_InkI scanned the drawing and removed the blue lines in Photoshop. I also filled the upper right corner with black (which I decided was faster to do on the computer than by hand.)
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And then I colored the spread in Photoshop. Unfortunately, I neglected to save any of the intermediate coloring stages. So I’ll skip ahead to the finished spread from the book with the text added.

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If you’d like to see more, you can find the book on Amazon at this convenient link:

It’s a Sunny Life! Now available

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It's A Sunny Life cover

 

My latest picture book, It’s a Sunny Life: An Adventure for Rain or Shine! is now available. I’ll post more about the book in the next few weeks, but for now check out this video about the book from KSHB TV in Kansas City. (Author Gary Lezak is the weatherman for KSHB TV in Kansas City.)

You can buy the book at your local bookstore or this convenient Amazon link:

 

For Richard Thompson

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I’m taking a week off from Jim and Ted’s adventures for something a little different…

I was saddened to read that the brilliant cartoonist Richard Thompson passed away a few days ago. I never met the man, but his brilliant comics and scratchy pen work have been a huge inspiration to me. If you’re unfamiliar, Richard Thompson created the comic strip Cul De Sac as well as a million other illustrations, magazine covers, and some brilliant caricatures. His book “The Art of Richard Thompson” was partly my inspiration for the Daily Drawing I did last year.

So I offer this sketch of Petey and Alice in memory of him. When I first discovered his work, I was disappointed by the deceptively simple characters and sketchy backgrounds. But the more I saw the more I realized how deliberate every line was. I was utterly amazed when I realized how utterly good he was. (My Petey and Alice tribute took far longer to draw than I anticipated, and Alice doesn’t look cute enough. She’s always cute, even when she’s annoying Petey.)

Jim and Ted 15: The picnic

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I figured that Jim and Ted needed a longer break from the insanity that has been their life. So here they are enjoying a nice happy, picnic.