Philo & Sophy Mailers

After agonizing over color in the printed books, I'm finally satisfied and ready to mail 'em out.

Each package consists of:

1. The printed book, from lulu.com

2. Our query letter

3. SASE

4. all inside one, eco-friendly "rugged" mailer (hoping "rugged" means it will arrive in pristine condition)

I sent 5 out last week, and will send another 5 out as soon as I get the next order. In a nutshell, it's expensive, but worth every penny. 

EXCITEMENT!!

Shop! Buy!

I just updated my Etsy shop with all the originals I have left from the Philo & Sophy book, as well as some sweet prints.

page 14

page 15

I really like how pages 14-15 look separately and without the text. Hm, I may just order some myself...

Its Here!

I just looked at the 2nd proof and well, it's looking pretty nice! You can purchase it now, at Lulu HERE.

Joseph and I will be sending copies plus the manuscript and query to several children's book publishers very soon. I hope to, at the very least get some feedback on the work.

More news to come!

Philo & Sophy Final Cover

This means I'm done! Just need to spend some time putting PDF's together and uploading to lulu. Oh and writing the inside pages. But I'm done!

Philo & Sophy Cover Progress

I may not be keeping up with the 12 week challenge, but I have all intentions on finishing the assignments. I also need to finish this before Philo & Sophy gets printed.

The sketch on tracing paper, ready to transfer. Painting started!

Philo, Sophy, and the dog are finished. Grass and flowers almost there.

Philo & Sophy Final Paintings

The ConTEXT show came down this past weekend, and I took my pieces over to a friend's house to have them photographed.

pages 4-5

You can see them all on my portfolio or flickr site

The printed book is still coming, hoping to have it available sometime in May.

Philo & Sophy Cover Sketch

The sketch I'm using for Philo & Sophy's book cover painting is also part of my week 4 assignment for the 12WC.

sketch with lulu crop areas

The assignment:

Weeks 4, 5 and 6 are all about creating 2 portfolio pieces each week based upon the research and planning you have completed in weeks 1 – 3.

The question of the day is... Can I complete 2 illustrations this week when I only have one sketch done? It is only Tuesday. 

12 Week Challenge

I signed up so there's no turning back. That's how I roll people. Starting April 5th I will start getting assignments in this 12 week challenge - http://zero2illo.com/category/12-week-challenge/ I can't imagine being as busy as I was for the Philo & Sophy project I just finished (YES just FINISHED... like 30 minutes ago), but I hope I can push myself again and see things happen.

I'll keep you posted.

I look forward to meeting a bunch of cool people and making lots of art.

Philo & Sophy lettering

The day after my birthday I finished all 14 paintings. Now on to lettering. So, they really weren't finished before, now they are getting there. I agonized over the fact I would have to paint over my paintings with words but as I started to put the text in, everything came together.

To lay out the text, I had to keep in mind the bleeds and margins according to lulu. The paintings are 12x18 to give a little wiggle room for this. I had to leave a little over an inch in the middle for the gutter, 5/8" on the sides, and 7/8" on the top and bottom. A while back, I figured out where the text would go using Illustrator. Now that the paintings are ready for lettering, I used tracing paper to hand draw all the text the way I wanted. I didn't want it to look like font, and it was fun to freehand it. But man did I underestimate how long this step would take. I think it took me a week without a lot of late nights to figure this out.

Philo & Sophy painting progress

I love talking with other artists about what its like when you're forcing yourself to create something. It SUCKS. We all love making art, but when you're not feelin it, it is probably better for everyone to just sleep. I had a schedule at this point to finish 2 paintings a week. I had made it through the store opening and the holidays. It was now the end of January. 2 paintings a week turned out to be more like, 5-8 paintings started, 0 finished. I didn't start finishing paintings until March.

It was easier to work on all the paintings that had the girl in them at once. All the paintings with dogs in them at the same time, etc. I almost can't imagine working on just one piece at a time.

More in-progress work here.

Looking back

I'm so glad I documented this since its neat to see how the drawings and ideas changed. A lot changed once I figured out I wanted 8.5x11 pages. Then, layouts were changing to make the whole sequence of images more cohesive or to fit the text considering all the bleeds and margins. The little changes happened when I got my hands on some reference.

Some of the layouts were adjusted at this stage while I learned a lot about how people read books. Thankfully I had some friends who knew much more about this than I did.

This one read a lot better flipped! That was an easy revision...

Philo & Sophy sketches

After I got back from a super awesome trip to Italy with some of the most amazing people in the whole wide world... I started seriously working on this project. This was about the end of September 2009. Funny because at the same time I decided to open a second store in Troy. While I was not scouring craigslist and driving Jorge's truck all around here and there picking up crap, I was finalizing the drawings for Philo & Sophy.

From here they got transferred to the Gessobords.

But not until after I spent about a week or two planning my color schemes in Photoshop.

You can see more of these preliminary sketches here.

Philo & Sophy thumbnails

I really can't remember when this started, maybe a year ago now, but I decided to work on some illustrations for a story for a friend. Joseph Ulrich is the author and you can learn more about him at http://www.josephulrich.com

I'm adding this post now that I've already finished the 14 paintings, and have begun lettering but I'm gonna pretend I'm just starting out so I can make this a little more interesting.

I started with Joe's story and some thumbnails. Here are some of the final thumbs I went on from the beginning.