Children's Book Cover

[D Akey]

Delightful! And a little sleepy. How cute is that for a little kid with a teddy bear. Gives them a little push start on inventing their own fantasy about their friends the toys after they see your book.

[pai]

Aww, so cute even this little bear so sleepy. I really like the feel of simplicity, freshness in the color palette you used and subtle line drawing. So smoothly. Hope to see more !

[byroncallas]

Cute seems to be the word floating about and hard to deny. Wonderful book cover, straight to purpose. It works.

[Whimsical86]

Thanks again guys for all the positive feedback. Being somewhat color deficient/color blind working with actual paints etc is tough for me. Good thing about digital is I can sample colors from photos to make sure I'm on the right track of getting colors somewhat accurate, even tho with the cartoony stuff it's not as important.

Again thanks for all the kind feedback means alot coming from such talented artists as yourselves.

[D Akey]

I went to art school with a chap who was color blind -- and he was a curiosity because he was very good with color. We had to ask him how the heck he could do that well, and he said he had his room mate fix up a go to palette, so he did his color work by formula. And he would show his stuff to someone who could warn him if he was way off.

I don't recall how much color he had in his vision, but I seem to recall he had very little perception in that area. Yet. . . for all that he was one of the better artists because he was really adept with values (greyscale which when color blind he said through skill in using lights and darks and form he could manage -- and boy could he manage well).

I had a teacher back then in a different class who maintained that if you had your values right, you could pretty much get away with any colors in illustration. What that meant was that if your values read well, people knew what they were looking at.

So it's not a bleak situation necessarily. It may make you far stronger in other areas of picture making, and as to the colors, you can do it by the numbers. And your idea of using color pickers is also very good. So you're fine. You'll do great. But the key is have fun with it. All else pales by comparison because if you're having fun you're likely to do Art a lot and people who do tend get better if they want to.

Go go go!!!!!

[Whimsical86]

D Akey
I realized I was colorblind/deficient back when I went for an eye exam when I was a wee lad and one of the tests was the little scope thingy you look thru, I don't think they still do this test these days, that had colored numbers in these blotches or spots of colors and I couldn't see any of the numbers. Browns and Greens are my worst but I have trouble with most colors. So painting with actual paints and physical media was always pretty rough for me, so I just stuck to sketching most of my life. And then when computers came along much later in life and the wonderful invention of the eyedropper tool in most art programs, I finally found a way to help me along with color.

I love the look of real watercolor painting but being chromatically challenged it's very tough as I can't tell if I have the color correct if I have to mix colors to achieve an effect or build up color with glazes etc. But I love the look of real watercolor paintings or illustrations. My 3 favorite children's books illustrators all use actual watercolors, scan them and then add finishing touches on the computer. I'm sketching for a new kid's book now and have tried every thing I can think of in test painting runs to achieve that similar look digitally but so far haven't been able to get as close as I'd like.

[D Akey]

I remember those color tests. They still use them probably because they're cheap pieces of printed paper and they work at least for a diagnosis.

Watercolor has been the Holy Grail of paint emulating. They've taken it a long way in the program to get it to this point, but a lot of the users tweaked and prodded with settings and some came up with reasonable results.

You may want to check out Steve B's experiments, And Copespeak and SomeoneSane and some of the other people who have played with them working to get a good emulation. I have not too much and like you I am not finding that I can luck into it. I think it may take some mileage. And it has its limits too so far. But little by little. . .and some of it depends on what you're after with the watercolor. There's a big range of looks.

As to the color thing, since you were had such an affinity for drawing, why the heck don't you stick to black and white paint and work on your values for a time. Great BW is elegant as anything. And through the stuff you can do with color adjustment, not just paint fills, you can dazzle up color from BW after the fact. And also you can hire someone or work with someone who will do only the color adjustments for you. But it would be your baby because you can do concepts, character and other designs, composition, and writing without any color whatsoever.

Granted, kids books need color, but like I say, get your BW working and the rest is icing on the cake that you can farm out.

Anyway, do what you do well and work outward from there. There's lots of challenges to get better with what you can do if you don't see it as a limitation. Could lead to a really original and distinct voice. Values are really what it's all about in my estimation even when the color is extraordinary. It's If the values are there, you have something solid.

[Kbrowncreations]

New Member to the forum but have been using Artrage for a for almost a year or so now. There are so many talented artists on here it's very impressive.
I'll never be able to do the technical realism art some of you members do. I'm in awe of the talent some of you have. My talent seems to be in the more cartoony/cutesy category.

So having said all that, I used AR to illustrate a children's book last year and am working on illustrating a new one this year, so I thought I'd share the first one I did last year. (It's available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble just in case anyone should be interested) But anyhoo...I just wanted to show another aspect of Artrage for us who do the simpler styles.

This one was done with the watercolor brush and pencil even tho I didn't go for watercolor in the traditional sense. I discussed it with the author and decided that the illustrations would be simplistic almost like a child had drawn them. Not a ton of detail and complicated shading. Turned out pretty cute.

I'm new here and just read your post from almost 3 years ago. I tried clicking on the paper clip icon to view your images, but nothing comes up. Is it possible for you to post them again or something similar to them? Thanks so much!

[JMMK]

Hello Kbrowncreations

Try clicking on the picture, not the paperclip.