It has been a while since I've posted. I have a ton going on which is all good, so I've not been around here much. Today, this is something I have to share!

Every month SCBWI hosts a drawing challenge #SCBWIDrawThis with a prompt word. For May the prompt words was #Alone. I thought long and hard on the concept of alone, trying to visualize what would epitomize this word. This idea struck me the morning the illustration was due. I almost didn't finish it having self-doubt take over about half way through. If you watch my video on YouTube, you'll see I started with a girl that was just not working, but the idea wouldn't let me go. So, I finished it late that night and submitted it with minutes to spare. See the full gallery of participants here.

I present to you: Alone

How often did you sit alone as a child on a teeter totter waiting, wishing, hoping someone would join you?

Falling in Love with Fall

This week I decided to embrace fall with some fall color paintings.

This time of year, while I enjoy the fall colors and the crisp cool air, I'm always filled with melancholy. I love the seasons and the change of weather, but I also miss summer so when it's not here. And while I enjoy winter, I'm not generally excited for it to appear -- mostly because it gets dark so dang early.

The first painting, Fall Walk, has some cotton candy sky, the color prompt for #colour_collective and splashes of fall colors and a couple in silhouette walking through a park with a city in the background. It think it captures my melancholy fall mood pretty well.

Fall Walk, @2017 Traci VanWagoner

Fall Friends 1, ©2017 Traci Van Wagoner

Fall Friends

I enjoyed playing with the fall colors so much, I decided to embrace the change of season and dive into the autumn color theme. While I was relaxing and painting in swatches and textures and broad strokes playing with different brushes in Procreate, the boy and turtle popped out and insisted on being painted.


And while painting them, a girl popped into mind, so I painted her and her cat. They are all happy it's fall!

Fall Friends 2, ©2017 Traci Van Wagoner

Do you love fall or does it also make you a bit sad? What is your favorite season?

There may be more kids popping out of those fall colors. We'll see. In the meantime enjoy Fall Walk and Fall Friends and go out and enjoy the crisp fall air and colors too!

Headless Horseman Spooky Art

Have a Spooky Halloween!

Illustration Friday's Spooky prompt was perfect for this week. I'm sure that was the idea. 

I've always been fascinated by the Headless Horseman and since that's pretty spooky and since it's Halloween, I painted this for some spooky fun. Have a spooktacular day!

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

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!

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

Balloon Lift Off: 6 Balloon Crossing

In case you've been missing the balloon adventures, here's another one for fun, Balloon Crossing. The color inspiration was Buttercup. I keep debating about how much noodling to do on these. I like the loose and energetic feel, but I also like to noodle things -- sometimes too much. That's one of the reasons I'm really loving painting on the iPad. I create most of these paintings with my finger first, and then I bring in the Apple Pencil when I want more detail. My art has loosened up a lot and I think feels more fresh.

Where do you think the balloons will take the girl and her dog next?

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

Illustration Friday: Shoes

I painted these shoes for Illustration Friday's prompt, which is "Shoes", in honor of my favorite pair of shoes and, well, they're orange and sunny and fun, so there's that too. Oh, and a dog, because you know dogs are awesome!

What are your favorite pair of shoes? And/or are you a cat lover or a dog lover?

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, all rights reserved

Balloon Lift Off 5: Wild

Happy Saturday! I've been on another Balloon Lift Off paint play adventure with the red balloons, the girl, and the dog. This one grew into WILD the #scbwidrawthis prompt for August. It started with a bunch of trees, some hills, the balloons, girl, the dog, then one cave popped up with a mama bear outside and her cubs inside, then more caves, more bears, and what to do bears love? Honey. So, in came a bear eating honey from a beehive, and more beehives, and bees. So, yep, wild. And I'm left wondering how the dog will get through all those bears and bees to follow his girl.

I hope you're enjoying this wild journey! If you have suggestions of where you'd like to see this balloon adventure go, feel free to comment with your ideas.

Wild, ©2017 Traci Van Wagoner

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 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

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

Spring Dreams

One night while vegging out to some TV,  I was paint playing on my old iPad with Procreate and my fancy-pants paint brush finger, and with one magical swipe, I discovered a whole bunch more fun and different brushes. Yay! So I set about playing with them, experimenting, doodling, dreaming, and this is what came about, Spring Dreams. My flowery painting also has a snail among other fun bugs, so it fits with Illustration Friday's prompt this week, Snail.

Happy Spring!

©2017 Traci Van Wagoner, Spring Dreams

Stomp

I had some fun playing with Procreate on my old iPad painting with my finger and created this for Illustration Friday Stomp. I'm enjoying working on a looser style of art, plus I have to admit that last week I found a bunch of new brushes I hadn't played with before in the program. Have some fun today!

© 2017 Traci Van Wagoner