Website update

Hey, folks. There's a new page on my website at Scapegoat Studio. I uploaded some of the watercolors I did for Joel Pankow's children's book, "The Stick and the Stone," which is ready for publication. It would have been at the press already, but BRIO Publishing suddenly went bankrupt. So the book will hopefully be published in 2013, pending a new publisher.

Anyway, check out the new page. I also updated the "Contact" page as well, including a new mugshot and current contact information. Please feel free to leave comments here!

More Watercolors

Here are a few more illustrations for "The Stick and the Stone." I particularly liked how these illustrations turned out. We're shooting to have the book finished by the end of summer. These are 9x9 in. watercolor on Arches 140# cold press.

Watercolor process

Well, in case anyone was wondering, I'm not dead. It's just been an extremely busy six months. My son was born in November. In January we decided we couldn't afford to stay in Savannah any longer, so we moved to Omaha the first week of April. I went on some job interviews later that month. Then I gave a lecture on worship arts in Wisconsin. And now we're still trying to get settled and I'm still looking for a second job, but trying to get back into the swing of things.

This is what I was working on before the move. These are some process photos of the watercolor illustrations for "The Stick and the Stone." The paper is stretched wet and stapled onto a 1/2" plywood board. I transfer the drawing onto the paper with graphite transfer paper. With this backlit piece, I applied masking fluid to the sun and did the sky first, working from background to foreground. I usually do some minor tweaking with values and color in Photoshop for the final.

A peek at the studio

Character sculpt

Here's a little 4-inch sculpt I did of the main character from "The Stick and the Stone." Since I don't have a ton of practice drawing children, this is intended to help me keep "on model." His name is Levi, and he's an Israelite boy, age 8-10, in the time of the Exodus from Egypt.

The Stick and the Stone: Redux

Here's what I've been up to lately. These are some prelim sketches for the book, "The Stick and the Stone," that I had actually started about a year ago (original post). After finishing a number of the illustrations in watercolor for my Directed Projects class, I felt that the book was in danger of... mediocrity, I guess. For one, Moses looked too much like Santa Claus for my taste. For another, I was offered the chance to rewrite the book. After rewriting, the first illustrations became mostly unusable.

So I'm taking another shot at it, starting again from scratch. Moses will look more like a burly Jewish herdsman than St. Nick sans reindeer. The text was rewritten to be more engaging, more accessible to children, and have some sort of a conflict-resolution plot. Hopefully I'll be finished with all of the sketches in the next week, so that I can start on the finals.

New Book Project

These are the beginnings of a book entitled "The Stick and the Stone." It's about a conversation between an Israelite boy and Moses in the desert. The author uses the miracles performed through Moses' staff and the miracle of water from the rock at  Meribah to explain Christian doctrine. The illustrations are done in watercolor on cold press.