Posted by: Lesley
This past summer I illustrated the story The Boy Who Wanted Wings for the magazine Angels on Earth. Angels on Earth is owned by Guideposts, which creates spiritual magazines. This is an inspirational Christmas story written by Patricia Gaddis-Clark, and is well worth the read. It was a joy to illustrate too! I know it was intended for print, but I am glad to see it on-line as well. Enjoy!
posted by: Lesley
©Lesley Breen Withrow
Today I woke up to a ton of snow on the ground. What a surprise it was! Unfortunately, it turned over to rain and now it is a slushy mess. But, the snow has helped to put me in the holiday mood. Well, the snow and the Christmas tree we just put up! There are no gifts under it right now and I’m not sure if we’ll ever has as many gifts as those under the tree I illustrated. Ha! But that’s okay.
Posted by: Lesley
In this post I thought I would show you a bit how I work from sketch to finished art.
1. Here’s my sketch
2. Next I lay down the foundation colors and start to fill in different elements of the art.
3. Once the initial art colors and characters are painted, I like to bring the art into Photoshop where I add lots of the details, textures and patterns. I have a large library of textures and patterns that I have created on paper using paints and scratchboard and pen and ink, etc. I have also been known to scan fabrics, newspapers, buttons, really what ever I think I can use in my art. It’s a lot of fun creating those different textures and patterns and once I scan it into the computer I can use it multiple times because it’s now a computer file.
4. And here is the final art with all the details, textures and patterns added in in place. But wait, there’s one more addition to this piece!
5. I decided to add a border all around it. This was a border I created by hand and scanned/manipulated in the computer. Hope you had fun seeing a bit of my working process!