Its a Jungle Out There

I wanted to give you all a peek into my studio (aka the dining room table) as I created my new illustration 'Its a Jungle Out There.'

I've been sketching a new series for sometime now, called 'In the Jungle' with pieces featuring - you probably guessed it - jungle animals. Gracie's nursery was jungle themed when she was a newborn, and I've always loved the little animals that my original sock monkey illustrations are holding... so I came up with these new sketches based on the jungle animals I love the best.

Here is a peek at some sketches.

Hmmm... if you squint very hard, you can see the "Its a Jungle..." sketch on drawing paper. I have to make it very light since it is the final illustration and I don't want graphite marks. The lion and the giraffes are just ripped-out pages of my sketchbook, so you can see them more clearly.

Here is my illustration in its gawky and awkward teen-age phase. It has potential, but is a bit homely as far as illustrations go! Usually I work one area at a time, but I colored everything in the foreground at once so I could show you what my picture looks like before the blending begins.

A lot of people see my prints and assume my work is done with watercolor pencils, because of how blended it all is... but I just used Prismacolors. I have many blending and burnishing techniques under my belt, that I've picked up and practiced since I first began using colored pencils 18 years ago, and I have to say honestly, that the blending is my favorite part of of my process. That is when the colors begin to POP!

After layering and blending several times, I outlined everything in black. These jungle pictures have a more cartoon-y look than some of my other illustrations and I liked the heavy black outlines.

I also decided to play around with a lot of white pencil in this illustration. I love the funky texture the white pencil adds to the piece.

Here is a before-and-after of one of the monkeys. The first picture shows layers one and two blended together. The second shows the blended black outline, as well as several more layers of color and outlines in white and orange.

And there you have it. The background is a mix of blue, green and chartreuse, with white circles and swirls. I think it is pretty cute!

Its a Jungle Out There 8 x 10 and 11 x 14

And here is another finished one, using the lion from the sketch I showed above:

The Jungle Kings 8 x 8 and 11 x 14

I'm actually really disappointed... these prints are so much better in person, but for some reason they scanned horribly! Its the background blue - my scanner just can't figure it out. So, if you think these are cute, I only wish you could see them in person. *sigh*

Anyway, I hope you like them.

Enjoy!

xoxo,