Artist at Work!

For me, summer means vacation and work at the same time. This summer, the Floyd series is on hold while I work on a different and new project (The next Floyd book, "Floyd and the Sparkling Seashell" is still in the works! Stay tuned!). My summer 2012 project is "The Hibernating House" by Kathy Tarentino and Sandy Leahy, and I am in the process of working on the house imagery and preliminary sketches.

This photo shows what my work area usually looks like at this stage. Sometimes I work in my sunny kitchen, sometimes in my studio room at the front of my house.

Artist at Work: Today, setting up my inspiration board, gear and sketchbook in the kitchen.

First, I like to assemble an inspiration board with the reference photos I will use most often. I simply attach the photos with double sided-tape and then I can keep the board nearby rather than have to flip through multiple pages of photos.

I use thumbnail-type sketches at this point, which means I draw a small box or multiple boxes on the sheet of sketch paper rather than using the entire page. This allows me some space to put notes along the perimeter of the drawing. Later, I will be gluing the printed-out text for each spread below its thumbnail sketch for easy reference.

I like to use a large spiral-bound sketchbook for this stage. It keeps all of my drawings together in order. This type of sketchbook can open up and lay completely flat, which is good for working as well as for digitally scanning the pages if I need to do that.

I also make sure I get a book with very thick drawing paper pages, not newsprint. The more expensive paper/sketchbook is worth the money.  Because it's much thicker and whiter than newsprint, it is a million times better for scanning or if I want to paint or test colors and, most importantly, I can erase a lot without tearing the paper.

There is a lot of linear work needed for drawings that have architecture involved. I like to use a clear plastic ruler so I can see through the ruler when doing closely-placed line work.

With all of my gear, I am ready to get to work!
Stay tuned for updates on my summer project...