A Penguin Named Patience - Final Sketches and Final Art

Moving on to more finished work...

After all of the rough thumbnail sketches have been approved, I tighten and revise and do final sketches of the entire book.

 And finally, after the Art Director has approved this round of sketches, I begin painting.

 

 

 And just for fun... 

And because you've been so patient, here's another...

Thanks for following along! Stay tuned for more regular updates and art.

A Penguin Named Patience

Hi all,

It's been a busy 2015, and I took a brief hiatus from blogging. But I'm back and with process posts and art and an event coming up mid-May!

First, and most importantly, mark your calendars! A Penguin Named Patience is out in and about in the world, and on Saturday, May 16th, I'm going to be at Books of Wonder in NY doing a panel with Bob Shea and Greg Pizzoli!

I'm definitely geeking out and doing a bunch of ridiculous penguin-dancing. My first book panel is with two crazy talented illustrators! (More exclamation points needed!!!!)

In honor of the upcoming panel, I thought I'd share a little of my process work for the book over the next week in a series of posts.

After Sleeping Bear sent the manuscript, the first thing I did was grab a pencil. Those three little penguins are some of the very first sketches I ever did of Patience. They weren't the only ones, though. For a few days, all I did was draw penguins...

Paint penguins...

Look at pictures of penguins...

And watch videos of penguins.  The aquarium in New Orleans where the story takes place actually has a series of videos of the penguins featured in the book.

Stay tuned... next up on the blog: thumbnails and scribbly penguins.

For more info about me and Suzanne Lewis and of course the book, check out these two interviews that Suzanne and I did for the KidLit 411 blog. Links to the interviews can be found here (KidLit411-Lisa) and here (KidLit411-Suzanne).

And for more sketches, process work, and cat photos, you can also find me on:
Instagram: @Lisa.Anchin

Twitter: @LisaAnchin

Facebook: Lisa Anchin Illustration

Good News

Hey there blog readers,

Like most folks, I have doubts now and then. It's all too easy succumb to the worry and anxiety, but every once in a while, someone or something reminds me that it's all going to work out fine.

And today, dear blog readers, today I have some brand-spanking-new, career-affirming news.

 I just signed on to my VERY FIRST official FOR-REAL-DEAL picture book project!! (Weeeee!!! Jumping up and down in the studio!) I'm illustrating a manuscript for Sleeping Bear Press. While I can't say much more about the project yet, I wanted to share the news with a handful of sketches. Because you may be seeing many more like these...

Stampede

Morning blog-readers,
It's just about 6:30 on the west coast, and I'm about ready to head off to Century City for a weekend of workshops, key-notes, doodles, intensives, illustration fun, writers, editors, and a crazy, amazing, positively stupendous herd of picture book folks running around the Century Plaza. And I just might be ready. (I might also be carrying twenty pounds worth of postcards, promotional pieces, portfolios, business cards, and book dummies with me all day, but that's another story...)


But back to the business at hand... Conference! And illustration! I'm hoping to find a wee bit of time to post throughout the weekend, but to give you an idea of the schedule, today I'm going from 8-8:30 - and I do mean 8am until 8:30pm. Whew. 


But if I don't, I did want to leave you with a piece of art before the rush begins.


I finished this piece not long before I left NY... 

New work!

Hey there everyone,

My thumb's on the mend, and I was approved for some light drawing and computer whatnot by the doc last week. Getting back to work has been wonderful but slow. Though I can still draw, it takes longer to warm up. But! The stitches come out on Thursday, so with a little more care, I should be back to normal work soon. (Side note... This week I also adjusted my lastest to do list with a new number one slot: become ambidextrous. If you're feeling ambitious, try showering one-handed and lefty. Ooof.)

But I digress. Because I was okayed for some light work, I took some time to put the finishing touches on a piece I was working on pre-injury.

A sample spread of Randall and Euphoria.

More new things!

Halloo everyone,

I've been playing a bit lately, using a few new characters to experiment with technique and composition. This one just recently came off the drawing board. It's an illustration for a story I've been messing around with. You might recognize the oversized alligator from here. Since that post, the story has undergone some major revisions, so Randall - our large green friend - is mostly unchanged, but Euphoria has had a bit of a makeover. Alas, she is no longer pith-helmeted. She does, however, sport a spiffy spike-y sweatshirt. I'll get my sketchbook pages scanned in and show you some of the character prep work soon. Until next time!

New work!

It's been a busy couple of weeks with loads of new work. There have been paintings, drawings, new layouts, new mailers, new faces and some familiar ones...

Oscar on the farm

Sketchbook Thursday

Hey there blog readers.

It's been a while since I've done a sketchbook post, and it just so happens to be a lovely Thursday... so why not?

I've been playing around with a new manuscript, and as of Tuesday night, I have just finished my first thumbnail dummy and started character designs. While I like the images, the pacing, the compositions, and the page turns in the dummy, the manuscript (I am quickly realizing) needs a major overhaul. That being said, (as I dutifully open Word,) I'm still having a ton of good old fashioned sketchbook fun with a handful of new characters... and yes, one of them is an 8 ft tall alligator. Well... 8 ft tall when he doesn't slouch.

His name is Randall.

  

 

Got Mail?

Halloo all.

Show day is fast approaching, and I'm in the process of wrapping up the books - working on a couple paintings, last minute edits, typography, text design, endpaper design - before I print and bind them. This part of the process is exciting, but I find much of this bit (from the finished painted product to output) exhausting.

However, in the process of working out the endpapers for one of the books, I actually ended up getting to do a little bit more painting. For the book I described in a previous post, I designed a set of endpapers made up of postage stamps (as the book prominently features two characters who send letters and postcards to one another.) At first, I thought that I would just do the stamps as line drawings, but after a bit of down time and some scrap watercolor paper, I ended up with thirteen painted stamps.

Eventually, I'm going to print them up as stickers to send out with my promotional materials.

Once upon a time...

Gather round dear blog readers. It's story time.

Once upon a time, a flamingo (one, Aloysius T. Pinkerton) and a penguin (the indomitable Birgitta Le Blanc), conducted a most extraordinary correspondence. Penpals and best friends, the two sent letters between the Caribbean and the Antarctic. Their friendship resulted in unexpected travel, marvelous days in the snow, warm afternoons on the beach, fancy tropical cocktails, frozen feathers, unfortunate sunburns...

I could go on, but alas, there is work waiting for me on the drawing table.

If you want to find out the rest of the story, you'll just have to come to the thesis show. (I know, shameless plug... but seriously, thesis show! The opening is May 5th, 6-8pm. Additional dates and details to come.)

New art!

Apologies my dear blog readers. I have been three weeks silent... but let me tell you, they've been a busy three weeks. Most of my time has been spent at my drawing table and only on the computer to do the cursory e-mail check and to hit play on the day's chosen playlist or podcast, so all e-whatnot has come to a screeching halt. However, in the hours that I've spent not on the computer, I finished putting together a total of five dummies and four new paintings. Chock full and all around exciting, but admittedly exhausting.

But this is a short update, as there is another painting waiting for me on the drawing table. In the meantime, however, I thought I'd give you a sneaky peek at one of the new ones.

From the balloon book (as of yet, untitled):

DONE!

It's done!!!

Believe it or not, but it's done. It's sewn, it's glued, it's end-papered, it's trimmed, and it's bound! The pictures are matted and framed and all ready for hanging on Tuesday, and the business cards and promotional postcards are all designed, ordered, and on their way.

Alas, no images of the book yet. It may be done, but the glue is still on the wet side... pictures to come.

But! In the meantime, some more shameless self-promotion.

Indesign: City in a Book

I meant to post this ages ago, but for one reason or another skipped over it in favor of other art or work.

This term, my digital class thus far has been wholly devoted to learning and working with html in order to eventually build our own websites. Useful skill, no? Definitely useful, and while there is an intrinsic logic, it is equally infuriating. Forget a slash mark ( / ) or a semi-colon and your entire page fails. My weekends are often spent banging my head against the keyboard.

Anywho, last semester, as you well know, we did a bunch of work with the Adobe programs, mostly Photoshop and Illustrator, but towards the end of the term, we devoted a single class to InDesign. I actually spent a weekend teaching myself InDesign in order to put Viktor's project together, but it was nice to have a class actually devoted to learning the program.

Our project was to take a sentence from this horribly pretentious book on design, "The Medium is the Massage" (1967) and create a four page book. I really like what I came up with, but it's just a kernel of an idea. I definitely want to come back to this idea and either rework it or use it elsewhere later.

And thus: