Lady Liberty Illustration- Day Two

Here are a few pictures I took while I was working today. First I worked mostly on the foreground details, then started building up some of the clouds of smoke, going over everything with light washes, working from light to dark.

Lady Liberty Illustration- Day One

First I traced my sketch onto watercolor paper (Arches 300 pound hot press) using a light box. Then I lightly penciled in the illustration. I do this part with hard graphite, which works well because once I start painting, those first pencil lines are so light that they pretty much disappear. Of course, this part of the process might not make for the most entertaining blog post, since the lines are barely visible. Anyway, here it is. If you look very closely, you can see the pencil lines.

It's all penciled in, then taped with masking tape to a wooden board (so the paper doesn't buckle while I'm working on it). I also tape the edges of the picture, so when I'm done, the picture will have nice clean edges all around. This isn't really necessary, but it's strangely gratifying to rip off that tape at the end of each illustration. Somehow, I don't really feel like it's done until I rip off the tape.
Then I started painting. I'm starting each illustration in this book with a brown underpainting. Then I build on top of that with color. I go from light to dark, working all over the picture. I try not to focus on any one area for too long, especially at this early phase, when I'm trying to build the overall composition. Here's how far I got today:

And here's a shot of my whole drawing table, with paints on the right, my picture in the middle, and a bunch of reference photos scattered around.
Tomorrow I'll keep working on the underpainting, then start building up some color. Again, if you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them.

Lady Liberty- illustration in progress

Here's a section of my studio wall. The pictures are for a book called Lady Liberty: A Biography, written by Doreen Rappaport, to be published by Candlewick in May, 2008. I always have the whole book up on the wall while I'm working on it. First the wall is covered with sketches, then layouts, and eventually, all the sketches are replaced by final art.

Right now, as you can see, some of the pictures are done, and some aren't. The illustrations are due August 1. Thirteen of the twenty illustrations are completely done, and all but four are at least started. I've been making some good progress lately, so if I keep it up, I might come close to making the deadline.
Today I'm starting a new picture. It's a wide view looking up at the Statue of Liberty during the dedication ceremony on October 28, 1886. It's the moment just after the statue's face was revealed for the first time. The point of view is from one of the many boats in the harbor during the ceremony. Here's my sketch:
So now it's time to get to work. First, I'll trace my sketch onto 300 lb hot press Arches watercolor paper, using a light box. The tracing is usually pretty sloppy, so after that, I'll pencil in most of the details. Then I'll tape each one to a board and start painting.

I'll take pictures along the way, and post something here at the end of each day. If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them. If there's anything you want to know that I'm not mentioning, let me know.

Iron Hans Jacket

Here's the jacket for my next book, Iron Hans: A Grimms' Fairy Tale, retold by Stephen Mitchell, published by Candlewick. It will hit bookstores August 14.

Portrait of my grandfather

This is a sketch I did of my grandfather, Alexander Hickey, in August of 1993, when I was 17. He and my grandmother were visiting my family in Maine, and one morning during breakfast (he was eating bacon and eggs, as he did every single morning), Papa asked me if I could draw him.

So I got a sketchbook and a pencil, and right there at the breakfast table, I sketched my grandfather. I had done plenty of life drawing at that point, but this may have been the first time that I drew a person who was just sitting there looking right at me. I drew quickly, since I wasn't sure how long he wanted to sit there. I think it took about 20-30 minutes. I didn't worry about how it would come out. I didn't even think about it. Looking back at this picture 14 years later, I still really like it.

Now that I'm an illustrator, and I spend hours on every picture- researching, sketching, revising, editing, trying to make deadlines, etc., I like to take a break every now and then and draw someone (usually my wife or daughter). It's always good practice to draw from life, and it reminds me that sometimes it helps to just relax and draw, and not worry about how it's going to come out.

But if I were going to edit this one, I'd zoom out and draw the whole scene, bacon and eggs and all.

Merry Christmas

Here's a watercolor sketch I did of Santa Claus while I was working on 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. I was thinking of doing the book in watercolor, but in the end, I decided it looker better in pencil.

Happy Holidays!

Giant sketches

Here are a couple character sketches I did while I was working on Jack and the Beanstalk. I had looked at several versions of the story, and found that some Giants were just too nightmarishly scary, and some were too cartoonish and silly. I thought the Giant should be a little bit of both- scary enough to make the story exciting, but not so scary that little kids will have nightmares after reading my book. So I gave him a big round nose, and pointy ears, and armpit stains, and food stains, and way-too-small crown, and a bad comb-over...