December 2016 – Gator Girl Art

Hi all y’all,

Happy Holidays!

My work ethic is getting a boost. I paint every day now unless I am out of town.

Here is momma.

The New Orleans images are shrimp boots, vegetables that grow well here (eggplant, okra, tulips, creole tomatoes, a magnolia tree), dark Mississippi river soil, a Mardi Gras bead tree, and a shotgun house.

I wanted a garden like this. It seems like you need a lot of money in the city to buy a house with a big garden area. I fudged on this because this is a family with an average income.

Here is a photo of momma in progress.

I didn’t mess around too much with the composition this time. The neckline of her shirt was an accident. I wanted to tell myself when I came back to paint that I wanted the neckline smaller, so I used a paint pen to mark the new neckline. It reminded me of a burnout shirt, so I left it.

I am going to put a little more of her hair on her right cheek (left cheek to you) because it looks too big. The danger in that is that it is hard for me to put the brush down. I am usually changing another thing an hour later.

The challenge for me is that it takes me so long to paint. I think the author might get tired of waiting. Each page is a full on painting, so it does take a while. I hope I reconcile with this soon.

2016 has been a hard year for a lot of people. I hope you are doing alright.

Keep hanging in there.

All of my love,

Gator Girl

Hi all y’all!

This is new for me. My next 16 paintings are planned. I am illustrating a children’s book. Even though I get a lot of leeway from the author, it is still different from painting whatever for however long it takes me. There are definitely pros and cons to this gig.

Mostly pros.

Somethings are just different. The easiest thing for me to paint is a woman’s face or an animal’s face. I have avoided painting babies. Babies and toddlers have really different proportions from adults. Their features are on the bottom half of their face and their pupils are very large. Their bodies are pretty square. Fingers are squat. I watched other people draw babies on youtube. I downloaded baby proportion charts.

I usually don’t paint a lot in the background, so I also watched many videos on perspective. I watched them over and over as I am a slow learner. Slow and determined.

I feel like my style lends itself to children’s books. I think I will be happy if this leads to career.

This is page one. I am going to paint something on each page to represent New Orleans. Sometimes it will be obvious to everyone and sometimes it will probably only be obvious to locals and people who visit often. I will always point it out to you.

Maggie showed me what a toddler would draw. It is the picture taped to the wall in the background.

I want to tell you how long I painted this page. I am pretty sure it was a month. I repainted parts of it every day. I started completely over after about two weeks. After a while when people called me, they didn’t even have to ask what I was doing. Then one day, when asked if I was painting the baby today, I said, “No, I am painting the mama.” 🙂

Next up… the mama.

Stay tuned.

With gratitude for anyone who wants to take this literary adventure with me,

Gator Girl

Month: December 2016

Page 2, Momma

The Book Illustrating is On