illustrating

The 5th Book

I completed Kevin and His Grandma, my fifth book. My objective of writing, illustrating, and self-publishing this book was to be creative. I chuckle when my students ask me how much money I have made on my books. I do not even market them and am certainly not ready to get others to buy them! I am striving to write and illustrate well. Perhaps by my 25th book I will be satisfied. In the meantime, I am just enjoying the process. This book was purposely created with as little technology as possible. I cut pieces and made collages, drew freehand, and used watercolor. I love Arnold Loebel’s simple illustrative style in pursuit of graphically representing relationships.

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.

Book 4 Illustrations

As I began illustrating “Kevin and His YouTube Channel,” I came across this Domestika course. The instructor is Felicie Haymoz, Character Designer and Illustrator. She was the designer for “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” This course is called “Anthropomorphic Character Creation” and I’m excited to learn a lot! I want to make this book a lot better than my last one. Oh, and having tons of fun on the road to the final product is always the objective.

Moooo!

I assigned my 5th graders Powerpoint presentations on the early settlers (New England, Middle Colony, Southern Colony) and the rubric included a MAXIMUM of 5 words per slide.

“Ideally, you will choose an image that represents your topic for the slide – consider a primary source, such as a drawing – and then add key words that will remind you of the content for that slide,” I instructed.

 

“Five words? Only five words?” They asked.

“Yes. Key words to remind you of what to say.”

Because who wants to read paragraphs on a slide?

They went to work, buzzing like angry bees. This would require them to know the material very well.

The kids had a major cow over this.

IMG-0924

But they delivered expertly!