Balloon Lift Off 8: The Haunted House on the Hill

The Red Balloons Keep on Flying

It's been a while since I painted more of the red balloon series. I couldn't pass up doing something spooky this week in honor of Halloween with a color scheme prompted by colour_collective and the color Ash.

The last in the red balloons series showed the girl floating toward a castle in the clouds and now she's coming back down and floating over a haunted house on a hill with a jack-o-lantern and a ghost. Eek! Her pup looks up at her from the middle of the island. Will he ever catch up with her? Will she ever come back down? Where will those balloons take her next?

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

Thanks again for joining in the adventure. You can now get Balloon Lift Off paintings 1-3 in my online store as posters, prints, cards and more! Check it out. I'll be putting more up for sale soon, so be sure to follow along and keep up on all the latest.

The Girl with Ruby Pink Walls

Character Art from Inktober Sketches

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner

This girl spoke to me from my Inktober sketches and begged me to paint her. I combined the two sketches you see on the left to create the final character I painted. She wants to go on an adventure like the girl and dog in my Balloon Lift Off series, which you see posters of on her wall. Her ruby pink walls were inspired by last week's colour_collective prompt. I painted most of this on my iPad Pro with Procreate, and finished it in Photoshop since the iPad was required elsewhere.

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

I had originally titled this, Running Away, but I'm not so sure she's running away versus running TO an adventure.

What do you think?

Her pen and ink counterpart in my Inktober series is on an adventure now. I'll be sharing my first week's drawings soon of Around the World in 31 days with Georgia and her Dragon, Swift, so be sure to check back.

Thanks ever so much for stopping by!

Pirate Island Concept Art

Setting inspiration paint play for one of my picture book projects

I didn't get a chance to post over the weekend since Inktober started and that sort of took over everything. I'll share more on that later. I also discovered the Bullet Journal system and had a ton of fun setting that up. It may be exactly what I need to get organized and settled and get stuff done instead of hummingbird fluttering from project to project and idea to idea, around and around.

Anyway, back to the topic of this post, Pirate Island. I had fun working out this setting for a picture book of mine. It involves a dragon and has a pirate flair. The kick-in-the-seat-of-the-pants I needed to get this image and concept out of my head and onto paper (so to speak) was, surprise-surprise, #colour_collective with the color prompt, Old Lace (the top part of the sky.)

Now that I have an image of the world my MC lives in, I can sketch out the scenes of her and her brother and a dragon interacting in the world easier. I'm excited to finally get the dummy book done for this one. I'm quite in love with the final story and this setting.

Picture book writers, do you find it helpful to have a setting image available while writing to ground your characters in their  world? This question goes for illustrators as well, actually. I previously have created character sketches (see below) before doing the dummy book, but not often the setting.

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner

Character exploration art for the picture book project

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner

What are You Hiding? Middle Grade Illustration

I decided to try my hand again with another monochromatic drawing, in blue this week, following the #colour_collective color prompt, Pewter Blue. I had fun playing with Procreate 4 while creating this one. I'm trying to decide if I like the messy look and line work, but overall I'm happy with this as a middle grade illustration.

Can you see the dragon?

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

On another note, check out my guest post, Draw What You Know and Know More by Drawing, over at Dani Duck Artist Obscure as part of the Smart Dummies contest this month. Hopefully there's some helpful tips there about researching and drawing. There's also a prize available from Bryony Supper. Go check it out.

Balloon Lift Off 4: The Lighthouse

I usually post my paint play inspired by Colour Collective earlier, but I'm a bit late this week since I have a tight deadline with sketches to finish for a book for Pelican Publishing (more on that later).

I stole a few minutes (okay, more than just a few) from my sketching time to paint another adventure with the the red balloons using Cordovan as the color inspiration to post to #colour_collective on twitter. I'm trying to keep a logical storytelling sequence to this series, so I also used the teal ocean color from last week and have the girl being swept in from the ocean this time.

Did she travel across the entire sea? I shrug. Perhaps. I was going to paint her in the middle of the ocean with the dog on a boat (which you can see a peek at the dog in a boat possibility with the time-lapse video on instagram), or passing a Cordovan colored pirate ship, but this is what came out when I put finger to iPad with Procreate. I go where the wind takes me, so to speak.

The first image is what I posted for #colour_collective, and the second one is because I felt I needed to push the lighting a bit more, so I spent a bit more time with it. Which one do you like better?

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

Balloon Lift Off 3: Swept Away

The red balloons are still flying.

This week I was inspired to continue with my Balloon Lift Off series with Swept Away inspired by #colour_collective weekly color Vert Réséda as the background color, which screamed ocean to me. Once again, the color inspired the art and the balloons won't let me go, so this is what happened:

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

Will she ever land? What will she see in her travels? How will her dog keep up if she is swept out to sea? Stay tuned, I'm sure there will be more of their story unfolding here. Have an adventurous weekend everybody!