'Cider' in Colour!

I haven't painted in a while.  Most of the jobs (Actually all of them!) I had last year were on the black and white line work side of things.  So now I find myself working for a client with a full colour kids book and I'm itching to get back into the world of colour pencils, watercolour and such!
To make sure that my skills are not rusty when I start the final, colourful artwork, I thought I would play with an old favorite;  coloured pencils, mineral spirits and vellum.  The drawing that I chose was a sketch that I did in the autumn of last year called 'Cider.'  A fox and a rabbit enjoying a nice pint of homemade hard cider together.
The trick is that the drawing was done in Wolf Carbon Pencil and I wanted to colour the original.  Which I did and although I do like it, probably won't do that again.  Even though I kept the mineral spirits away from the pencil line, the job would be much easier if I just laser copied the pencil line onto the vellum, coloured it in and then, with the Wolf Carbon Pencil, go over the finish piece.
Here it is:

;)

The Forgotten Archives. Entry #2.

More stuff that is at least 5 years old!

'The Egg'

(from that never ending series of ShadowBird Girls)

The rough drawing to "Wanna Take a Ride?"

The finished artwork can be seen here:  

http://betta-girl.deviantart.com/art/Wanna-take-a-ride-13779201

The underdrawing to "Wee Chandra & Friend"

This image was apart of a series of faery art that I was thinking on licensing.  I only finished one from that series (there were 5), 'Lovely Lillian.'

Recent Doodles

I do a lot of drawing that has no background idea.  They just come out right then and there.  (Actually, I think I do that more than anything else.  Perhaps I should call the sketchbook that I'm planning on publishing this year "Spontaneity!")
These are not finished for a reason.  I would like to finish them with colour.  So I just pin them on my board till I get the inspiration to add colour to them.

'Tailgater'

'Night Watch'

'The Bribe'

Artwork for Sale!

I just posted two images on Ebay for auction.

If you want to take peek at the auction, here are the links...

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300516499046&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT#ht_500wt_950

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300516491690&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT#ht_500wt_950

And here's the two illustrations up on Ebay:

Pipsqueak

'Peace' as Light as a Feather

The Forgotten Archives. Entry# 1.

I was going through some of my old drawings last night looking for ShadowBird related work.  I have been swamped with client projects lately and really felt the need to touch base with my personal work and what I hope one day will be my brand.  This is the work that truly comes from my heart, an often neglected organ in the face of all this recent freelance activity.
There will be more but for now I will leave you with these: The beginning to the 'Forgotten Drawings Archive.'

"Beeba"

"Breeze"

"Flora"

Nellie McClung

Last year I was asked to illustrate 3 books for Owlkids middle grade readers, 'The Canadian Flyers Series.'
I finished the first book about Nellie McClung (a hero to the women's rights movement here in Canada) last year and right now I'm working the second one about the high north.
Even though I'm not all that pleased with the results of this book, there is something in them that's worth posting.

I'm itching to work on an animal story!  What do I have to do to get art directors and editors to notice my animal illustrations?!