Kevin

Taking a course by Cecilia Varela (through Domestika). She’s really good, but I don’t like Kevin (Kevin and His YouTube Channel) the way she instructed. She suggested to make his eyes large to appeal to children. Maybe my book is not really for children (?) But I much prefer him to look like a 40-year old 5th-grade chameleon. I think it’s hilarious.

Varela’s-influence Kevin:

I do like her exercise in making body parts to show animation on the page. I’ll do more today.

Concept sketchbook: Daily Practice

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I blog daily to hold myself accountable. I have not attended art school and probably never will (although…never say never)!  My primary goal is to exercise creativity in a positive way and in writing my third book I want to try something new. I learned about this from creativebug.com’s Lindsay Stripling’s daily practice lesson.  My subscription to creativebug.com is the BEST $8/month I’ve ever spent.

I’m going to keep a conceptual sketchbook and work on it each day, even if I have a super busy day, I’ll make a simple doodle to keep it going.

 

 

 

Learning

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I’m playing around with new techniques and styles. I really like this artist, Olivier Tallec. I emulated copied his illustration to see how he managed the shadow on the wolf’s face. I like his color choice and the graphite pencils he used. I don’t have any…I tried pencil and chalk and didn’t like either. Just placed an order for graphite pencils and I’m excited to use them!

To Market

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It’s on Amazon.

People ask me why I don’t market it more and try to maximize sales. At this point, I’m not trying to make profits or “become known.” I’m honing my craft and still learning a lot about art and writing.

My goal right now is to make meaningful work in my own voice and to do better with each project.

I’ve adopted Seth Godin’s philosophy (and James Altucher’s ideology) of “choosing myself” and that’s why I’ve chosen self-publishing.

Kevin the Complainer – The Cover

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I’ve been working on this intermittently for a week. Trying to learn Adobe Photoshop just to get the cover done.  I didn’t have to use Photoshop for “Esther” although I do recall having a challenging time with the cover page. I’m learning the benefits and downfalls of linking layers vs. grouping themin Photoshop. This is much more than I ever thought I needed to know when self-publishing, but it’s interesting and pretty fun.

Just ordered a proof. After I’ve received it and checked it over, it’s publishing time!