What’s New This Week…

Just finished up a book on undersea adventures for a local client. Here are some of the internal pages. The project was done in Adobe Illustrator and stared out with pencil sketches on copy paper.

Selected Sketches from Charlie the Choo Choo: A Day Away…

This is the second in a series of books by author Cyle Young, the first being Charlie the Choo Choo: A Day At Work. Such a fun story to illustrate!

Though I've been using Adobe Illustrator for over a decade, this is the first time I've done such a large project using only vector art. I traditionally use PhotoShop for a more textural and loose feel, but I wanted these images to be bright, cheerful and clean. I think Charlie would animate rather well.

I utilize a lot of clipping masks when I work in Illustrator and create my own blends rather than relying on Illustrator gradients. You get much more control and color brightness this way. I'll be posting some Adobe Illustrator tutorials shortly. Stay tuned!

Charlie the Choo Choo: A Day At Work

What’s New This Week…

I’m almost finished with the illustrations for my most current children’s book.* I was pretty pleased with the way this page turned out and am especially fond of the filtered light in the shop. Hope you all like it!

*I should note, I’m illustrating the book but did not author it.



Original done in pencil on paper, scanned then drawn in Adobe Illustrator.

What’s New This Week…

I’m working on a new children’s book—another one about trains. I can only show a little snippet of it so far. Here is the preliminary cover.



I’m using a much more simple illustration style—simple in that I am not using brush strokes or a painterly effect. It still takes me about 8-10 hours to draw and color each page. Plus I keep seeing things I want to change.

I also keep in mind that I don’t want any of my trains to ever look like Thomas or The Little Blue Engine. I also need to make my wheels appear to be moving faster … maybe a little blur is needed.

Selected pages of my latest book…

“Going On a Train”

My first children’s book is published and printed, CDs are done and it’s ready for sale here « Music Speaks Publishing ».

It was printed locally by Skyline Printing and they did an excellent job. Great color, great binding and quality work all the way. This was definitely a learning experience for me as I am well into my second children’s book. I’m learning how to judge my time a little better as far as the illustrations go, and I’ve also learned to trust your own judgment. If an image isn’t working there is no sense in not just scrapping it and starting over. I did this on two of the spreads in the book and I’m very glad that I did that.

The finished book looks great and I hope that I can work with Pamela in the future on more projects.

Illustration Style: Step by Step

Today I’m working on coloring pages for a new Children’s Book. As I was working I thought it might be interesting to see the numerous steps that I take to achieve the finished result. Every illustrator works differently, and each one has their own techniques, but here are mine:

STEP 1: I use a blue colored pencil (not the non-repro blue; I find the pencil to hard to draw with as the lead is very dense) to draw in my line-work to work out the shapes and style. I then go over this with an HB graphite pencil and scan in the image. In my case, I don’t actually have a scanner, so I take a macro-shot with my digital camera and import this into PhotoShop to clean up. (A scanner is high up on my wish list!) Sometimes, I might rearrange elements in PhotoShop that I didn’t think were working as well as possible in the original sketch.



STEP 2: I open my sketch in Adobe Illustrator and with a personalized brush that I have created, go over my sketch and create linework. I make subtle changes to the style and shapes to help refine the sketch.




STEP 3: I add the color and refine the pallette in Adobe Illustrator. They have a tool called Live Paint Bucket, which is essential do doing these drawings quickly. Thank you Adobe! Here is where I start to notice little things that annoy me, like the girls sword tip lining up exactly on the edge of the ship – or tangent to this line. There’s also a few other areas and of course the rope needs to be brought in front of the girl, not under her leg to trip her.



STEP 4: I bring all of my layers into Adobe PhotoShop and start painting using a custom brush that I made. I want this to look like it was created in pastels, so it has a bit of a rough edge to it. This file is only 80% done at this point, however I’ll update it when it’s complete.

What’s New This Week!

I'm currently working on illustrations for another children's book. These are all just preliminary pencil drawings waiting approval to go into the color stage. I haven't yet worked out the way I'm going to color it though – watercolor, pastels, or acrylic. I'll be playing with that later this week.



I'm playing with the expression on the teachers face. She's supposed to look surprised/confused at what the little boy tells her he did for the weekend.

New Book Coming Out!

I'm so excited to introduce my first illustrated children's book, "Going on a Train," by Pamela Ott. She is a song writer/author and Children's Educator in Tucson Arizona and has written a wonderful little song.


The book will be published by October and available to purchase through her website (up soon) www.musicspeakspub.com.

I've had a great time illustrating the project and have done the entire piece digitally using both Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop. I use a wacom tablet and customized brushes that I developed in PhotoShop to get a pastel chalk feel to the drawings. Of course I did all the preliminary sketches the old-fashioned way; pencil on paper.

I hope everyone has a chance to check out this product and of course I hope you all like the drawings.

Selected pages from "Going on a Train"