Here’s a section of the putto for one of the Thunderstorm Dancing spreads. He will have digital layers added and be incorporated into a spread design, but this is how he looks before all that happens to him.
Tag Archives: Thunderstorm Dancing
Just now as I was jotting down notes for the colour scheme of Thunderstorm Dancing, I had a vision of the book being a costume.
The book covers are the dress – deep purples, greys, blues with a flash of red.
The endpapers may be startling like a red petticoat suddenly revealed
The internal pages are creamy lace and muslin with some blue embroidery, black stockings and a red ribbon here and there.
Drawing the little wench seemed the best way of jotting down my colour scheme. So here she is, a little 3 minute PhotoShop sketch (so forgive the hands and feet). If the book turns out very different, I might have to draw her a sister in a different outfit.
Weather fragments
2 Replies
What a rocky road this picture book has been for me. It looks like it is coming together at last though. Here are some weather fragments to make you feel lucky to be indoors, out of the rain.
A short while ago, I had to get a bit organised before going colour for Thunderstorm Dancing. Getting organised goes completely against my grain with any of my art. It’s a kind of superstitious thing. So much of my better work is on bits of scrappy paper, drawn in eyeliner or using a waitress’s pen, and so much of the work I like less (that’s for those of you who will kindly reprimand me for not liking some of my work ;-) is on expensive paper using the very best of materials… well it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I only need to pick up a bit of expensive paper to get so uptight that I can’t draw to save my life. My lovely art teacher at school, Cecily Osborn, identified this problem about 30 years ago. (OMG!)
This is a little sidetrack really…. what I was going to say is that I drew (in a wonderfully organised way :-) a little menu of characters showing which watercolours I mixed to make the various characters’ skin and hair tones. I sketched a couple of options for each character to begin with and then got impulsive and drew only one of each. (From this you will know that I very logically started on the right and worked left. Ahem.)
Here it is, ink smudges and all.
Of course, in-spite-of / because-of the fact that these characters took two seconds each to draw and are imperfect, I immediately liked them more than some of the painstaking images I have drawn for the book.
This doesn’t surprise me one bit.
However, I know as well as anyone who has attempted it, how hard it is to draw a character in two seconds and get it right first go. In my case, practically impossible. Only one in about 12 drawings will look remotely right. Put eight characters together on the one illustration (dancing together) and you have a logistical challenge. Devon, you can do the maths maybe ;-)
So… interesting times. I am not, in reality illustrating the book with two-second-characters. But I am loosening the style up a bit as I go along. It has its challenges. And its rewards.
p.s. Bella may notice that I have two different skin options for Pippa. One much warmer than the other. Possibly the one on the left is a Soft Summer, the one on the right a Cool Summer. I can make his outrageous statement only because she has dot eyes, right Bella? The Pippa on the left has brown eyes, the one on the right blue eyes… in my imagination. I think I am going the warmer, Soft Summer. I may be going mad too, but that’s nothing new :-) Last time we went here, Bella was giving excellent colour advice on a family of mice...
Seems like a decade ago.
Working hard, drawing and painting Katrina Germein’s picture book Thunderstorm Dancing. I might post some random weather fragments occasionally but can’t show you much until it’s finished…. and I’ll come out from under that cloud ;-) hopefully very soon.
Wish me luck!
Drawing from the imagination
Drawing without the use of a life model or reference material can lead to some surprising results. He he. Who knew Mum had two left feet? (Size 11 by the looks)
Immortalised on line before Eraser Surgery.
Alice gets in on the action – sneak peek at one corner of spread 22-23
Funny how when you draw something upside down, your eye can lose its usual sense of proportion. This is the last in a series of head-stand sketches for Thunderstorm Dancing. In some of the earlier sketches, when I turned the picture the other way up after drawing, (so that the child was seen with with head upwards) I was amused to find that her head was enooooormously too large, and sometimes her body was extremely shortened.
However, I didn’t try drawing this picture the other way up. I felt the only way to get the right balance, weight and feeling was to draw her as she is to be seen on the page.
Thunderous expression
The cat is becoming more baleful by the minute. But who can blame it when the only dry place is indoors… but indoors everybody has gone mad with dancing , banging and clanging? I have a vision of it being a sort of smudgy thing in each spread, somewhere amid the linework. So it might be black, if that works.
I think it might have to be a longhaired moggie. If there’s anything more uncomfortable looking than a cat that has been caught in the rain, it’s a long-haired cat that has been caught in the rain. Poor puss. I think perhaps this cat’s name is Thunder :-) That seems infinitely appropriate.
But I am thinking I will give it a treat at the end of the book. I think it might get a delicious fishy. One that was imaginary, but might, just might, not be imaginary…
Is Thunder a boy or girl cat? Somebody tell me. So impolite to call it ‘IT’.
Lucy the whippet gets in on the action…
Poor Poppy. As I have a thumping headache at the moment due to a cold, I sympathise with his predicament :-)
Often it’s the quickest pictures that have the most life… And often the quickest pictures are pictures of dogs… Ahem
This needs to be re-worked and then ‘unworked’! But I’m trying for that look that Hugo gets when he is squirming with glee, half crushing whatever he is holding, and throwing his legs about from a safe vantage point… not quite ready to join in… The cat is getting closer to the right baleful and disgusted expression :-)
Judy Watson 