I’m working on a collection for the Cat Coquillette the Art of Collections art licensing course starting with some sketches I did years a go but never developed. The theme is seasonal, evergreen, summer, tropical flowers and mer-children as the larger motifs for wall art, greeting cards, tee shirts, kid’s backpacks or totebags.
I will be adding repeating patterns taken from the main motifs using similar color palette and using Barbell Dresseler’s course exercises from her Repertoire course to create classic repeat patterns for fabric, wall paper, and other houseware and stationary. I am taking both courses at once and learning a lot about art licensing and repeating patterns
This is the first merkid illustration showing her at her sketch pad on the beach. I started a painting of this merkid in acrylics years ago. But decided to finish the series in photoshop. I used to paint in watercolor and then after art school I went back to Long Beach City College which had a wonderful painting department at the time, and learned to paint in oils and acrylics.
Now I use a lot of photoshop and illustrator for creating art. One of my favorite resources for illustration with photoshop is Paintable Academy. There are many similarities to digital painting and traditional formats but there are also a lot of differences with using layers, creating your own brushes and learning how to get different effects like watercolor or differnet textures.
I also like Ctrl Paint another digital painting site by a concept artist, with many free videos and a huge curriculum of coursework.
I started with sketching her out by hand and then scanned the art into photoshop and continued drawing on my tablet. Right now I use an XP-Pen tablet but the direct draw feature doesn’t work. So I am drawing on a black tablet while looking up at a screen on my computer. It works fine but I am going to get a direct draw Wacom tablet soon. It will feel even more natural and the pen pressure will be even more like pen on paper.
Merkid painting on her drawing pad on the beach from start to finish
