100 Watercolors #31 - Flowers

Claire and I have two rabbits, Patty and Selma.  As you can see here, they are very cute:

We often feed them our food scraps, which they love, especially carrot ends, celery, bits of apple, broccoli stems, kale, lettuce, etc. etc.  I'm telling you this to set up a mistake I made on this week's theme.  I was doodling various ideas for flowers, when it dawned on me that it would be very cute to show a whole field of flowers and then a happy little bunny in one corner munching away at them.  Here is the result of that idea:

When I showed this to Claire, she looked at it for half a second and then said, "Tulips are poisonous to rabbits."  !!?!  It turns out, rabbits can't eat any flowers that grow from a bulb.  Who knew?!  Not me...  Oh well, let's just imagine that's a whole field of some very weird looking dandelions, shall we?

Next week I'm going to start posting about the Basewood cover design process, but this week I want to tell you guys about a great new book that just came out!  It is none other than Leo Geo and His Miraculous Journey Through the Center of the Earth by my good friend Jon Chad.

This book was one of my all-time favorite minicomics, and I am so excited that it will now be available to a wider readership.  When I was a kid, I used to love to draw cross-sections of elaborate underground tunnels with secret underground forts.  Well, Leo Geo is the ultimate expression of those drawings.  The book opens vertically so you can follow Leo Geo from the top of the page allllllll the way down to the bottom.  Along the way, Leo Geo rattles off all kinds of interesting geology facts.  If you have a kid in your life who's into science even a little bit, they will love the adventure, humor and drawings in this book!

Jon has also reworked his website so that it is now the home of the Fizzmont Institute of Rad Science.  He has been posting all kinds of stuff, including his jaw-dropping Leo Geo pinball machine which is not to be missed!

Next week: Basewood Cover Thumbnails!

100 Watercolors #30 - Under the Rain

Well, this week's theme once again features my favorite kind of weather... rain!

When I was 23, I spent four months busking in Sydney, Australia.  There was always something magical about playing music outside, but especially when it was raining (though I busked with a guitar, not a trumpet).  Anyway, this one was a lot of fun for me to paint, for lots of reasons.

Next week's theme: Flowers!

100 Watercolors #29 - Happiness

As promised here is the second, much happier theme from this two-parter:

See?  Life's not so bad!  I was really happy with the layering of of colors in her hand through the water and plastic bag on this one.

Last night I was messing around with repeating patterns in Photoshop.  I found a pretty good tutorial and then whipped up this trumpet pattern:

I didn't get the exact effect I'm hoping to accomplish, but I still thought it was pretty cool.  It's very quick and easy, and it will be a good trick for future endpapers.

Next week's theme: Under the Rain!

100 Watercolors #28 - Sorrow

Well, below is the first image that came to mind when I thought of this week's theme.  If you think I'm being rough on this little girl, do not forget that I am a cartoonist!  This week and next week's theme work together as a sequence.

In other news, I began the cover design process for the French edition of Basewood this week.  As some of you might remember, back in 2008 I did a three-part post on this blog explaining the cover design process for my first French comics collection [Part One / Part Two / Part Three].  I'll try to do a similar thing this time around, once the Basewood cover is finalized.

Next week's theme: Happiness!

100 Watercolors #27 - Foreign

I am very careful when I buy ink to make sure it is marked "waterproof" so that if I want to slap some watercolors over the top of it, my inks will not budge.  For some reason, my latest batch of ink is not working though, and I ran into some trouble on this week's theme.  As I started to paint, the ink bled into the color, even after letting the inks dry for a day and a half!  Luckily, I was able to blot away the offending mix of watercolor and ink with my trusty paper towel before it all set.  Still, those stork legs are a bit darker than I would have liked...

I'll have to paint more carefully from now on, but that is a hack at best.  If I want to print these files eventually, I'll never be able to get a true, black for my lineart because everything is being scanned all at once.  The real way to get nice crisp lineart, is to keep the black lineart and watercolors on separate layers in photoshop.  "But Alec," I hear you ask, "How do I do that?"

Well, luckily, my old pal Aaron Renier posted an awesome watercolor tutorial on his blog last week.  He goes step by step through the proper process and also follows up with a lot of helpful tips in the comments section.  If you are working on watercolor for print projects, you should definitely give it a read!

Next week's theme: Sorrow!