Sleepy Sugar Plum Dragon and Friend

Day 25, Inktober 2016 Dragons, Tired

This drawing has tugged at me all year to paint it since creating it last year during #inktober as part of my dragon collection for the prompt word #tired.
 
So I did.

I've painted dragons in various colors: red, green, gold -- the usual, so when I saw the #colour_collective color prompt, sugar plum pink, this last week, I was inspired to try that out. What do you think? Do you like pink dragons? Hmm, what kind of magic or abilities would a pink dragon have?

I do believe the little girl is having sweet dreams as she cuddles up with this cute and dusty pink dragon.

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

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.

Cute Cheetah Family in the Jungle

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

Children's Illustration 

I was going through some old files to see what struck my fancy for this week's paint play with the color Midnight Green for #colour_collective
and these little cheetahs jumped out out me, begging me to paint them. I mean, just look at those eyes. How could I resist?

I had so much fun creating this adorable cheetah family in Photoshop with some fun brushes and my signature style texture. The characters came from some sketches I did while designing an animal racing game for a client

Thanks for stopping by, I hope my painting brings some smiles and perhaps some illustration work as well.





Don't forget to subscribe or follow me to keep up on the latest news, paintings, behinds the scenes peeks, and the occasional art tip. If you're interested in getting my art on posters, cards or more, please visit my Zazzle store TVW Creations or my new RedBubble store.

And please check out my children's illustrator and author website for all my latest work. I have recently updated it so it's all fancy and brand spankin' new! Check it out. Thanks!

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.

Silly Squirrel Chasing Dog

While transferring old files from disks to a new backup drive, I rediscovered several old dummy books and a variety of sketches for various projects. One project in particular I had a lot of fun going over again. I've had this picture book idea, My Dog is Crazy, bouncing around for many, many years and it has gone through various drafts, rewrites, dummy books, critiques, submissions and around and around and around. It's had some interest from editors, but not enough to make it past the final hurdles to get bought. So, it has sat in wait for a while. I just may try to tackle it again.

This illustration came from a sketch from an early dummy book which I still loved when I found it, so I painted it. Once again, #colour_collective provided the nudge I needed with the color Vert Pré.

Samantha Rose Edwards tried to hold Marvel, really she did, but Marvel is crazy. Zip-zooming, splish-splashing, squirrel-chasing crazy! 

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

Balloon Lift Off 7: Castle in the Clouds

Up, up, up into the wild blue yonder to the castle in the clouds. The red balloons keep flying. Hold on little girl, hold on! Keep up, puppy, the best you can.

I hope my painting and this adventure will uplift your spirits in troubling times. Keep on dreaming.

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

Shocking Pink Fairy Tale Queen

I don't usually paint with such a shocking color, such as pink and stinky, but #colour_collective inspired yet another break from my color palette with Shocking Pink, although I do love to use purple and that worked well with the pink.

This color really took me back to my early days of toy design in toy school at FIT with all the girly toys and, of course, Barbie. I spent a lot of time combing the isles of toy stores back then, and it never failed, you turn a corner and -- BAM!-- an entire row of nothing but shocking pink plastic girly toys everywhere and most of it perfumed. Thus, pink and stinky.

These characters came from sketches for one of my picture book projects. I think I like them, so you'll most likely see more of them in some form or another. Shocking pink may not be the right colors for them for the story, but it was fun here.

Since I've been spending a lot of time exploring color this year with these weekly challenges, I might as well ask, what's your favorite color? Or colour?

© 2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

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!

Balloon Lift Off 2: Up, Up and Away

I had so much fun with the red balloon painting I did last week for #colour_collective and had a big positive response to it,  I decided to do another painting in continuation of the balloon lift off story.

Up, up and away she goes! Where she lands, nobody knows!

I shared an earlier (not quite done) version of this piece on twitter and instagram since I had other work to finish and wanted to get it up on time to share with the rest of the @colour_collective community. I've noticed that the art I create on the iPad is brighter than when I share it online. So I brightened it up and added a lighter sky and more highlights to this version. Color consistency in our digital world is tricky.

Stay tuned, I may just share more of this girl's (and her puppy's) journey. In fact, I'd love to hear your suggestions and thoughts on where she might land and what she sees along the way. Enjoy the balloon ride.

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, Up, Up and Away

Balloon Lift Off

Happy Friday! Inspiration struck early this week for this week's colour_collective with the prompt color Portland Orange. Balloons! High in the sky with a kid holding on and being lifted into the blue.  This is about how it unfolded for me as I painted this in Procreate. I started with a dark blue background, then with a big, blocky brush I splotted on orange, red balloons in a new layer. Some green below, some lighter blue, a swath of sidewalk, a girl holding onto the balloons, then, of course 'cause there's always gotta be a dog, her pup standing beside her all concerned. Mostly I painted this with my finger, but the Apple Pencil came in handy with adding the final details, which is what was missing in my paint play before on the old iPad with no pencil.

I had a ton of fun painting this. I hope it brings you some joy viewing it. Have a great weekend filled with balloons and good times!

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

Summer Nights and Ice Cream

I had a ton of fun this week painting this piece with inspiration from colour_collective, Pantone 292 C. For my b-day I got a new iPad (just in time too since my old iPad 2 went kaflooey), so this week my paint play has been more involved and I got a bit more detailed as I played with the Apple Pencil vs. finger painting. I still used my finger to paint a lot of this, but with the pencil I was able to get more detailed and target my brush strokes more accurately, not to mention the pressure sensitivity. Some of the brushes and for certain parts of the painting, I still much preferred the direct approach of painting with my finger. It's been a fun experimenting. Much more experimentation to come. I hope you enjoy my process.

© 2017 Traci Van Wagoner

The Treehut is Occupied. Oh my!

I forgot to post my illustration, Treehut Occupied, yesterday with the #colour_collective fun. It's never too late to share though, right?

This was another fun experiment with the color of the week khaki in a full-on monochromatic illustration. I started with a sketch from #inktober2016 dragons and played around with values in Procreate on my old iPad (new one has been ordered -- wahoo!), and then brought it into Photoshop to add final details. I love the idea of illustrating middle grade books, so you'll probably see more work like this coming up.

To be completely honest, I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with this one yet. But I did have fun, and ... dragon! I'd love to hear your thoughts. Successful or not? Suggestions? Critiques?

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner

Mermaid Glade

Happy Friday! I had some fun this week in between a hectic and fairly dramatic week dealing with getting more work, tax problems, and family issues to paint one of my MerMay sketches, Mermaid Glade, for colour_collective. The color was iris blue. I'm enjoying expanding my abilities to paint backgrounds and settings as well as dramatic light and balancing textures and all that good stuff. I think I just might have pulled this one off.

If there's enough interest, I'll create a poster and other goodies in my Zazzle and RedBubble stores with this art. What do you think?

© 2017 Traci Van Wagoner, Mermaid Glade

Girl in Pink

Sorry I haven't posted here in a while. I've been busy finishing the illustrations for Rest in Peace RaShawn, which is now available (see Books), as well as finishing some new dog toy designs, and game designs and illustrations. It's good to be busy doing creative work.

On top of client work, I've been having fun paint playing both in Photoshop and on my old iPad with Procreate (which I LOVE).  Lately, I've dived into the @colour_collective challenges each week. I love playing with color and this gives me a jumping off point each week and encourages me to expand my color palette. I have to admit that many of the colors I would not have picked, so it has expanded my art world. This cautious girl and her cat were in my to-do-someday sketch file from past projects, both personal and work related, which spoke to me when I saw the color for this week, Mountbatten Pink. I painted this in Photoshop using my wonderful Cintiq. Enjoy!

Girl in Pink © 2017 Van Wagoner