Owl, Ghost, Spider & Witch for Halloween. Free Coloring Page

I had the urge to share another FREE coloring page. Click on image to enlarge and print. Enjoy!

IF: STRONG

A strong witch can handle anything!

This is a portion of a work in progress. I plan on posting the finished illustration when I'm done.

Summer is over for sure! Have a great Labor Day Weekend!

Little Witch is Back!

I wanted to improve the character study for the witch without having to redo all the pieces. The most apparent weakness to me is that in two of the 4 panels the little girl is down in a similar position with her dog. I liked the last one because it shows a nice connection with the characters, so I decided to dump the second one and add this one, which illustrates the moment where she would come in to show her dog what she found. I thought it would only make sense to have the dog startled at her sight!

Here's the full story:

I welcome your comments!

IF:PRETEND

I wasn't going to participate this week because I don't have time to make anything new and I didn't want to recycle an old illustration. Then I thought, 'what the heck' (This is my son's new phrase...I hear it about 50 times a day, and now I'm saying too)  Anyway, here it is...one of my witch series. This little girl loves to pretend she is a witch!

Have a great week everyone, and thanks for stopping by!

MONDAY ARTDAY: 1 Character, 4 panels

I started this character as an exercise for last week's Illustration Friday theme poof. The idea evolved from a sketch to a series of illustrations for a mini story. I have colored two of the illustrations, and may complete the other two. 

As part of my process for this study, I had to use reference material. I am not sure how many artists draw from memory, but I am on of those that needs to look at the subject for better accuracy, or things begin to look a little too weird. Even if the lines of the subject are very simplified, it still gets a little tricky for me with perspective and such. I wish I had the time to take a drawing class with live models. I think it would really help my drawing abilities. For now, I will keep working with my two live models….my children! They don’t seem to mind either!

Any feedback or comments are always welcomed!

Illustration Friday: POOF!

Read updates to this post below...

What do you know? I thought I would pass up this week’s challenge and tend to some other projects I have been putting in the back burner, but my mind kept taking me back to ‘poof’. So I started to sketch, and from the sketches I thought the idea lent itself for a book layout. It’s not really a spread, because it’s not one illustration that spans over two pages, which is something I have wanted to try out.

I went back to the drawing board and the writing pad. I am not claiming to be a writer, but I wanted to show text on the pages and I did not want to use dummy text as a placeholder. I wanted to show the same character in different poses and show how the text and the illustration relate to one another.

Well, a few tracings, scans and re-draws later, I present you … this little witch!
I usually like to post my work in color. This was such an exploratory exercise, that I did not have time to paint them, but I’ll try to finish them next week and when I do I will update this post.

BTW- If you have any recommendations or suggestions to improve these, please feel free to comment. I want to build my portfolio and it is difficult to know how strong your work is without the input of peers. My kids and my husband think everything I do deserves and award, which is so sweet, but not necessarily reality!

FIRST POST UPDATE:

Here's the first page in color. I must say, I am pleased with how it came out. I shortened the text a bit. Let's see if I can recreate the 'magic' one more time! ...I 'll post the other page before the end of the week. (if I can get to it!)

SECOND UPDATE:

I had to share this with everyone... When I realized the obvious, I chuckled! Let's see if you can realize it too. 
Now, let's play the game: What is different between the picture above and the one below?

If you guessed the dog is missing one leg, you were right!

I have no idea how that happened? Even the sketch didn't have the leg, and the whole time I was painting, I just thought of shapes, colors textures, and never noticed! Poor dog!

Anyway, I feel better now that he is complete.

THIRD ... and last... UPDATE

I was getting ready to work on the second sketch, when I received Heather's comment. She made so many good points, mostly about point of view and layout. I took her advice and made some changes to the sketch. I think this illustration has more energy and movement.