Moving right along

Ongoing work is taking place during our significant rainy season. It is not supposed to be a rainy season. It is supposed to be a sunny, warm, let's go swimming season. Huh!

However, since it seems to have become the R A I N Y season, I am busy at work on two new ms/illo projects. When I tire of elephants and African plains, I can take a break and switch to families with interesting secrets.

Here on my worktable are some print outs. I often use these to help pace the story as I create sketches and a few finishes for the dummy. Finally happy with the manuscript I can concentrate on the best placement for the characters. Right now they are printed three pages to a sheet, but I will cut them apart for a thumbnail book and keep adding new sketches until I am ready to submit the work.

As many artists will tell you, we get very involved with and attached to our characters.

Sometimes they even shout back at us and say things like:

"Move me over there... I don't like it under this tree."

"I don't like fruit, paint in some cupcakes!"

"Where do you think you're going, you haven't drawn in my feet yet!"

And so it goes....

Making Progress

Here are a few of the ten or more steps I have been taking to finish work on an owl painting. The last image in the series is close but not quite at the finishing stage. There were many painted versions before the last image evolved. There will be more definition in the final painting and the dark lines will most likely be painted over or blended away.

©GingerNielson2007

And here's a bit of trivia. Did you know that the Sooty Owl has four talons and that he /she can use them with two in front and two in back or spread them all out separately to grab at its prey with each one spread north, south, east and west... just like a nifty set of ice tongs.