New Brainbox Candy 2011 Catalogue

The new 2011 Brainbox Candy catalogue is out and looking pretty excellent. Here are my Teeny Tiny People pages. Should you wish to download the entire catalogue for your own enjoyment, here's the link. The 'Modern Life' series is now in 5" x 7" format.

http://www.brainboxcandygallery.com/page52.htm

Balloons!!!

For the new set of Birthday greeting cards I am currently working on, I wanted to make balloons in a wide range of colors to suit various scenes and colour schemes. Ready-made dollhouse balloons are (surprisingly?) difficult to come by, so I had to put my thinking cap on and create my own.

Fortunately, Easter is soon upon us and craft stores are groaning at the seams with all sorts of egg shaped paraphernalia. I grabbed a cheap Styrofoam garland from Michael's Craft Store which happened to be the perfect size. The material needed to be as light as possible, in order to 'float' on the wire support.

Styrofoam Easter Eggs from a garland. Painted with acrylics.

Stick in wire and secure with a dab of glue. Floral wire works very well. I poked them into Oasis to secure for drying.

Begin the tedious process of dipping in varnish and drying. Dipping... and drying. Dipping... and drying...

A big glass of wine will make this tedious process ever so slightly more bearable.

But it's all worth it in the end....this guy is ready to PARTY!

Little Tiny Vegetables

For the Peter Rabbit cover, I am building another 3D diorama for a photographic illustration (I really need to find the proper. succinct word for this style... 3d Illustration? Diorama Illustration?).

Anyway, it will be a broad view of Mr. McGregor's garden. Peter will be pictured munching on a carrot. I have it loosely sketched out.

I started sculpting the veggies last week. It's my first time making polymer clay food (hey, there's a first time for everything!).

Roll out balls of clay approx 3mm diameter. Score surface with needle. Flatten another small ball of clay in oval shape. Wrap around ball as first leaf layer.

Mix darker shade of green and repeat leaf wrapping. Overlap leaves midway. Score leaves before wrapping.

Scoring the leaf. Starting to look like cabbages! Remember, it's OK if they are not uniform... will serve to make them more 'organic'.

Ta-daaa!! Little cabbages lined up and ready to bake. I actually forgot that polymer clays tend to darken in the oven, so they came out a tad dark (not pictured :)). Not a big deal.

On to the carrots. Greenery is fake foliage from a craft store. Mix an orange, not too bright.

Create ridges in the carrot by rolling carrot underneath x-acto blade. Dirty up those little suckers with some crushed up pencil (chalk pastels would work better, but I don't have any)

Baked. Greenery glued in.  They will actually be 'planted' in the scene, so I didn't really need to make the whole carrot. What a waste of TIME!!

Sniff sniff... kitty Noven is treading some dangerous ground here...

NESCBWI Conference Poster Showcase

During the NESCBWI Conference coming up next month, illustrators are invited to submit work for a poster showase. The challenge: Redesign the cover of a children's book that you consider to be a milestone in children's literature. It can be a picture, middle grade or young adult book.
 
After much deliberation, I settled on Peter Rabbit. I hope it's not too obvious... 40 million copies of this book have been sold worldwide since its publication. The story has been re-interpreted in countless styles and formats.

Over Christmas I was home in London, and I had the chance to see Beatrix Potter's original letters which inspired the story, as well as the finished watercolour pieces for the text at the Victoria and Albert Museum. They were truly marvelous. This, and that fact that bunnies seem to be my 'thing' at the moment, also contributed to my selection of this particular book.

Also, I know it was over 100 years ago... but I think this cover could use a little re-vamping!