Time sneaks up on us... now that the SCBWI conference is over, its time for my drawing class to start again!

For more info, click here, or on the "classes" tab in the site menu.

I wanted to briefly talk about why I wanted to teach a drawing class. Isn't just drawing enough? Why take away from precious creating time to do it?

For a long time I've been interested in not just drawing, but HOW we draw. What actually goes on in a person's brain when they are making something? It's something that is hard to articulate--artists usually know how to do it, but not how to explain it to someone else.

I don't have all the answers, but I love sharing the ones that I do with the people who sign up for my classes. It's fun too see the ah-hah moments and the visible progress as they "get" it, and see a drawing that they made that actually looks like the real thing.

I feel strongly that learning to draw has benefits for anyone, not just those who want to be art professionals. It helps you focus, set aside your natural biases to see things in a new way, and to meditate, among other things.

So, if you're in the Schenectady area and any of those things sound cool to you, I'd love to see you in class!

This year, I decided to enter the House of Illustration's Book Illustration Contest. This year, the book was Howl's Moving Castle, so obviously I couldn't resist. And... I did not make the longlist.

Many beautiful entries did, though. Take a look: bicpeopleschoice.org/book-illustration-competition-2019/

Regardless, I am proud of my work, and I'm glad to have created these pieces.

Soon, I will share progress shots of how each piece progressed to finish. For now, here they are:

Of these, which is your favorite? Which is your favorite longlisted entry? I'm having a hard time choosing.

So its, what... 2019 now or something?

Resolutions are a thing around now, as is grumbling about how they don't really work and how you should be ready to improve yourself at any time of the year, yadda yadda.

Also, having a Theme Word for the year is also a thing lately. Last year, my word was Baby Steps. Which isn't one word, but I was a bit of a rebel. It was an extremely fitting word for the year, considering that I had a baby in January... and he ended up learning to walk in December. And now nothing in our house is safe.

But I digress. Aside from things associated with my kids (who are darling, just by the way) I took a lot of baby steps in 2018. While I didn't sell art in any shows or fairs, I attended a few with the express intention to do research and think about what I would do in such a show. That was a good baby step.

I completed a few small illustration projects last year as well--no mean feat with a baby and toddler demanding most of my attention. (I mentioned that they make up for most of it through cuteness, though, right?)

Oh, and a couple of those illustrations got a bit of recognition, actually placing twice in the monthly SVS illustration competitons (including my Octopus Bath image, created the month after giving birth, since... I'm crazy?). Thats a good baby step.

My goal had been to get out three post cards last year... I only sent two. BUT. That is still good! I had a very positive response to the second one in particular, from an agent who wasn't even looking for new clients. So flattering!

I also planned and taught my first ever art class. That was a BIG baby step.

My word for 2019:

I started a lot of good things in 2018. I just need to keep them going. I don't need to slam on the gas and accelerate as much as I can... I just need to keep the balls I have rolling.... rolling.

Like, with postcards. I would like to ACTUALLY send three post cards this year. And submitting to agents in particular. (Gotta get that dummy finished first... speaking of actually completing projects, thats another thing to keep rolling...)

And with art shows... I want to do more than just attend this year. I want to have a booth in one or two, mostly just to learn. I'm sure it will cost more to get my tent, tables, prints, card reader, etc. than I'll be able to make back, but the point for now would be the learning.

Also, with contests. I just turned in my entry for the House of Illustration's Book Illustration Competiton. Because, um.... HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE. Seriously.... how could I NOT? I want to keep the ball rolling by continuing to enter in competitons when I can. And hey.... if I enter competitons, I may even win a couple like I did last year. You miss all the shots you don't take, amirite?

Continuing the momentum on my drawing class, I will be teaching it again this semester (starting mid February). The plan is by next fall to teach a painting class, as a sequel to the drawing one. And ALSO teach the drawing class. (Maybe consecutively, rather than during the same weeks.... hmm. Obviously lots to be figured out here.)

Ok, y'all get it already, I know. I'll be done now.

FORWARD MOMENTUM!

Oh, one question: do you have a word for the year? What was it last year? What is it for this year?

Sorry I've been pretty silent around here for the last few weeks. For awhile things were moving along at a leisurely pace, and then all at once EVERYTHING seemed to want to find a place in my schedule. I have a dummy to finish, two contests I really want to enter, a job with a deadline, a conference to prepare for, and, oh yes--two kids to keep alive and happy.

So, I won't be saying much around here or on my email newsletter for a few weeks. By then I will (hopefully) have things under control again.

Bye for now, see you soon!

This is... kinda surreal.

I have a lot of different podcasts/channels/music I listen to while drawing and I basically just skip around to what I feel like listening to on a given day, so I don't really hear ALL of any given channel or podcast. (Note to self: do a post where I talk about all the cool illustration related channels/podcasts I listen to and ask for recommendations.)

I was just catching up on some recent Will Terry videos since I haven't listened for awhile. This title caught my eye.

I thought, "Hey, thats a legit concern, I wonder what he has to say about that..."

Then he mentions the tweet that prompted these thoughts and I'm like, "Hmm, that sounds familiar... wait a second... that sounds REALLY familiar..."

So I scroll back several months in MY OWN twitter feed and... there it is. My pessimistic tweets from late last year. And only now am I finding this direct response to them. Life is funny sometimes.

The good news is, I'm not feeling quite so pessimistic of late. My feeling recently has been--if you love the work and you learn and improve, that should be the most important success. It sounds lame but that's how it is.

Like the whole "Shoot for the moon: even if you miss, you'll land among the starts" quote, as cliche as it might sound. Maybe I will never ever succeed at the specific things that I want to. But If I'm working on something I enjoy, and learning and improving and doing good things with it, I will get SOMEWHERE worthwhile. It may or may not be what my current ideal version of success looks like, but I will get SOMEWHERE good if I do good work.

Finding the time to work is my current problem. Anyone want to borrow a toddler and a really cute baby?

I forgot to post the progress shots of my Rapunzel piece! I always think its interesting to go back and see how the piece looked in the earlier stages. I had a LOT of fun with this illustration, and I'm excited to try this again in a few years to see where I'm at.

Here's my question... are there any other little details in fairy tales that bother you? I have another illustration I want to do addressing another of my story pet peeves, but I want to know...  what are yours?

I've always loved to see how my favorite artists have developed their skill and style over time. The hashtags #drawthisagain or #drawthisagainmeme have lots of fun examples of artists who revisit the same subject matter as they did in the past and show the two versions side by side. I never did it before... but that is about to change!

When the idea of this image first came to me, it stuck in my head and wouldn't leave. This happens every once in awhile. Usually, drawing it out gets it out and thats it. I tried just putting it in my sketchbook, but that wasn't enough. I was in college at the time. and was luckily in a class where we had a lot of freedom in choosing what we would paint for our assignments... which was just the excuse I needed.

Honestly... I wasn't thrilled with it came out (and, of course, am even less so now). Despite trying multiple thumbnails, getting detailed reference with my roommate posing in costume (Thanks, Annilynski) and doing everything I knew how to do, it just turned out OK. But, I was just a student. Giving it a good try was all I could do, and I did learn a lot from it.

Fast forward a couple years. I had graduated and worked in-house at Cricut for a few months before moving across the country with my husband. I was working from home, experimenting with my process and style and expanding my portfolio. What to draw? This idea jumped to mind--I wasn't satisfied with my last attempt, why not give it another go in an entirely new style?

So I did.

I liked it much better. I felt that the more graphic style was really working for me, and it had a bit more movement than the previous version.

Fast forward to now, a few years later again. I have been experimenting and developing my style more and found myself wanting to try this image yet again. Now with kids of my own, I found it easier to make Rapunzel look younger as I had always wanted. Its not as graphic as my second, not as modeled/realistic as my first. And I still don't love it, but it is an interesting addition to this series. I think I may have to continue to return to this subject matter over the years to see how my art changes.

Well, first off, you can participate if you want! In fact, please do! I’ll definitely enjoy having company for this challenge (though I am committed to completing it alone if nobody is interested.) Drawing is a skill that comes with practice, practice, practice, and this is a great way to do it! To make it “official”, I’ll say that in order to count it for this challenge you must:

1. Draw a set number of drawings (you choose)
2. Within a set time frame (again, you choose)
3. Directly from reference, either a photo (preferably your own) or from life
   
   

Realistic, accurate representation is the goal, but a complete reproduction of the photo/reference isn’t required. Artistic interpretation is allowed here. So, like you can see in the drawings here, I simplified the clothing and left out the background in order to focus on what *I* wanted to draw.

I will be doing 50 drawings before the end of September 2018.

That means I’ll want to do around three a week--I think this is a do-able goal with two kids, while still pushing me a bit, and even maybe-possibly-hopefully leaving time to work on my from-imagination illustrations as well. Though ultimately, I think that this will help me do those better as well, even if I don’t have time for them during the time I complete this challenge.

But what will I be drawing?

Well, this is where you can help.

I fully expect that MOST of these drawings will be of my kids, because they are completely darling and, really, why waste that? And there are a few cool things around my house/yard I’d love to get a closer look at, and I might be able to convince my husband to sit still for awhile…

But, as they say, variety is the spice of life. I’d love to have a few other photos to choose from.

If you want me to consider drawing your photo, post it to Instagram or Facebook and tag me in the caption. Use the hashtag #drawthissarahluann to be double-sure you’ve got my attention and make it clear that you are posting it for this challenge. Then, I’ll see it and maybe draw it.

I did say maybe.

Since this is a personal challenge and not a commission, I’m not going to guarantee that I’ll draw every photo I’m tagged in. If the photo doesn’t work for me some reason (or if I get way more submitted than I’m anticipating), I’m just going to pass.

I’ll be more likely to choose your photo if:

-Its a candid shot
-it features a person (or pet--I'm less interested in landscapes/still lifes)
-it is in indirect natural light
-it just has that “something cool” in it that’s hard to put into words.

Also, don’t tag me in photos you didn’t take--specifically, not photos of you taken by a pro photographer. They took the photos and own the copyrights to them, while you own the photos you take.

If I choose your photo--thanks! You are awesome! Your support means a lot. You aren’t obligated to do anything. If you like my drawn version, you can share it on social media if you want, but that isn't required. If you do just make sure to credit and tag me as the artist. IF you would like to purchase the drawing, we can talk about it. But no money, or drawing, is owed to anyone either way.

How does that sound? Anyone joining me? Do you have any cool photos for me to draw?

Lets do this.

After my last post showing some of my old (somewhat embarassing) work, I now want to show a new piece I've been working on. After filling up my last sketchbook with a bunch of experimental stuff (see my Instagram feed) I had a bunch of thoughts on how to change/improve my process. I decided to try it with one of the fun, simple sketches I did in the sketchbook first. Here is what happened:

I started with my original sketch, but drew over it to improve a few things--I wanted my character to be younger, I fixed some of the anatomy, and I wanted the stack of books bigger and to have a more interesting overall shape with a bit more movement. Then, I went into my normal cut-out technique... almost. This time instead of focusing on the linework and colors, I instead started with a silhouette and then whittled away at that to get some defining lines and a couple colors. Basically, I'm using the same process as before, but with more of an emphasis on value and silhouette rather than line and color. Its probably a distinction only I really see, but it feels like a much more natural and intuitive way for me to work and I'm excited to do some new work in this style.

Next up... remember the Alice in Wonderland piece in the last post? Well, I'm going to do an updated version. I've always loved seeing an artist coming back to a subject/image they did years previously and then re-interpreting it with their current style and skill level. Its my turn!

Recently, I've been trying to get my office organized, and at the same time, my computer files. I have a lot of old work saved on this computer! I thought it would be fun (mostly for me, but maybe for someone else too?) to look back at some work I did in school--see whats good about it, and the many things bad about it. Because, lets face it, I have a lot of bad drawings in my past. But I'll be honest: I'm gonna hide the really REALLY bad ones, and post the almost goodish ones here. Because I do have some pride.

Since these are scattered in various places on my computer, these are in no particular order, chronological or otherwise. I'm just loading these in and typing up my thoughts about them as I come across each one.

I thought I'd lost this file! Well, I have no idea where the original PSD file is, this is just a JPEG, but still--here it is!

This is a fanart piece for the book Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. If you like good books, and strong female friendships, and also crying, go read it.

This was created in the summer of 2012, just after spending 18 months on a mission, so I was trying to get back into my digital art groove. I still didn't have my own computer or tablet at that point, so this was done on my roommates lap top. I took photos of myself using the photobooth app, used Photoshop to assemble them, and then used the little finger pad mouse thingy to paint over my assembled photo. So yeah, the characters look really similar--they're both me. Some parts of it work really well, and lets be honest, some are really really clunky/poorly drawn. But it was a great project that got me back into digital art. And it captured the book moment and characters well enough that the author not only liked the image, but she has it hanging in her office. So yeah,  though its far from perfect there are things to be proud of here.

This is a poorly photographed oil painting, but you can see it well enough. And this second bit of found old art is.... another fanart piece. What can I say, I like good books.

If you haven't read The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner you are SERIOUSLY missing out. But before reading it you should read The Thief and The Queen of Attolia, which are also excellent. And then after KoA there's A Conspiracy of Kings and Thick as Thieves. So basically there is a lot of awesomeness in your future. You're welcome.

Coming back to this, I'm surprised that I actually painted BLOOD. Though this is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series, so it makes sense that I would choose it, it also happens to be a scene that includes... blood. Eurgh.

I remember that this was for one of my Beginning Oil Painting class assignments, but I don't remember exactly what the assignment was. I remember that I did one of the other assignments based on Sherlock Holmes (I actually still have THAT painting... maybe I have a photo of that somewhere too!) at the end of the class the teacher commented that I always found a way to make the assignments exciting for ME. Fanart is fun, OK?

This was for my Narrative Illustration class. We all had to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and illustrate it in our own style. I very deliberately based my compositions on the golden section, which was a fun exercise, and generally did give me a pleasing layout. In college, where I was of course an adult (well, mostly ;-) and was surrounded by adults, I didn't have many kids to look at and draw, which definitely shows here. I really want to do an updated version of Alice falling down the rabbit hole in my current style, and make her actually look like a little girl. I love it when I see artists revisit an old image and re-do it in their current style.

Ooh, I remember this one. This was an entirely self-initiated image. I found this photo of a baby deer all curled up, and loved the simple shape of it and wanted to try simplifying it even more. Recently at work I had done a series of images using this texture and really liked the result, so wanted to experiment with it more. Speaking of...

This is one of the early projects I did at Independent Study. you can see I did a sort of collage using textured images, and it turned out pretty cool. At the time they wanted the banners to "bleed" off the top and lefthand sides, and then have them "fade" to the right and bottom without having a hard line or corner on that side, thus the unusual design of these landscapes.But even before I did this one, there was...

My very first assignment at Independent Study! So this would have been done around... 2009 or 2010 ish? I think? Anyway, I looked at dozens of woodblock prints when I did this assignment. I kind of cringe looking at it now, but it was a fun start.

After finishing this assignment, I had a couple more relating to it.

For some reason, some of the Japanese characters were "outlined" in these and therefore are still on the images, while others were not and therefore disappeared, since I don't have the Japanese font on my computer. Hmm. Anyway, these images were for the lesson about Japanese food. Maybe you can tell I was feeling a bit more confident in Illustrator at this point.

Ok, I'm having a lot of fun, but this will be my last one for now.

My three little pigs illustrations. Oh dear. Of course I basically just drew the same pig three times, but put different clothes on him to be different characters. The idea here was that each of the artists at independent study were asked to illustrate a different story (Cinderella, Thumbelina, Noah's Ark...) and that each different language course could use the same illustrations--the story could be translated into each language, and the pictures would help the students with context clues and such. I don't know if that actually happened or not, but it was fun to actually illustrate a story for once. Badly, but yanno... baby steps.


Anyway. There is still TONS of old art hanging out in various files on my computer, but I'll stop posting them for now. It's been really fun for me to go back through this stuff.

What do you think? Are you surprised that these images were created by the same person as the ones in my current portfolio, or do you see some commonalities with my current work? I'd love to hear your thoughts!