Illustration Friday # 23: URBAN

I was determined to do the Illustration Friday prompt again this week. I pulled out an assignment I did for the class I took last semester at RISD in Adobe Illustrator. We were asked to do a copy of a travel poster, which was lots of fun. After I finished it, I worked on a travel poster for Providence, RI, where I live. This one isn't a copy, but designed using several photos I took of the obelisk and Courthouse  downtown. After finishing it up today, I lost the new work, so I did a quick Photoshop touch up for some of the final details. (sigh).

Providence ©Cheryl Kirk Noll

Illustration Friday # 21: SWIM

copyrighted art, not to be reproduced, painted by Cheryl Kirk Noll

Illustration Friday is a weekly creative outlet/participatory art exhibit for illustrators & artists of all skill levels. A new topic is posted each Friday and you have one week to draw, paint or doodle your interpretation.

I haven't done Illustration Friday in a blue moon, (almost a year, actually), but their prompt word for this week was "swim." I have a number of finishes that fit the bill, so I decided to try to get my feet wet again.  

I did this illustration a few years ago for a story about a woman who "swam with sharks." I was just starting to play with the textured style I've been adding to my traditional watercolor, which you can see in the coral.



The second piece is an exercise I did for an Adobe Illustrator class last year at RISD-CE with Bryan Rodriguez (great teacher), where I learned about vector vs. pixel, how to "live trace" my art, how to push and pull with that durn pen tool, manipulate with layers, and on and on. I can see why people like Illustrator for it's precision and flexibility.

Octopus, done in Adobe Illustrator, © Cheryl Kirk Noll

A book about Mom to Learn InDesign

Last spring, I decided to take a class in InDesign at RISD Continuing Education with Bryan Rodrigues. I loved it, and dummied up a few of the children's books I've been working on. Our big assignment was to do a book with 100 pages, so I decided on a scrapbook sort of project, and limited it by focusing it on my mom.

I had no idea how involved the project would become, or how much fun it would be to learn about my own family history, from the late 1800's to present.

In class, Bryan had us set up a book using a Blurb template. I chose a 9 x 12 size, and planned chapter layouts, formatting styles for headings, text, and captions. If you've used Adobe programs, InDesign is relatively intuitive, but there's nothing like having weekly instruction, followed by assignments to put what you've learned into practice. Bryan made it all seemed so easy!

One of my favorite pages was a montage of my mom modeling for Century Club. The pictures here span from 1976-2011... 35 years. She hasn't changed much, has she?

Mom modeling over the years

My niece helping Grandmom sort
family slides a few years back.

At home, I started by editing some of the 700 slides from our childhood that Mom had converted to digital a few years ago. I scoured the many scrapbooks I've kept over the years. During phone calls to Mom, I "slyly" asked about some of the old family stories we'd heard a million times, to make sure I had them right.

I didn't! What a surprise to hear the details of stories I thought I knew. I wrote them down, and started a hodgepodge text document.

A page in progress...
with lorem ipsum and lots of ????'s

Family photos from the 1920's

The book wasn't complete enough to give to Mom by the time my class ended, but it was chock-full of lorem ipsum (fake type used for placement) and photos that I'd scanned and formatted. By August, it felt like it was pulling together, but the text was nowhere near complete, so I made a PDF file and "gave" it to my mom for her 86th birthday.

Pictures from 1940

Happily, she was thrilled. From that time on, Mom and I collaborated on the text and captions. She searched her records for dates and details, and corrected my "gazillions" of mistakes. I collected some of her scrapbooks and photographed pages from others.



I began to turn to resources from other members of my family. My cousin, Jack Eiser, had continued the genealogy work his sister Joyce began, and I was able to access Rowe and Grant family trees on ancestry.com, complete with census records, birth certificates and more. (Thanks, Jack)
 I'd collected family reminisces over the years, and I pulled anecdotes from those. When Mom didn't remember details from her childhood, she called her sister and brother and gathered their memories. Not surprisingly, they often saw things through different prisms.

Photos from the 70's!

At Thanksgiving, Mom and I went through the text and trolled for missing pictures and information. My husband told me firmly that I needed to finish this never-ending project in time to have it printed for Christmas. I started working fifteen hour days, and for a few days, the project wasn't fun, with color conversions and uploading, spell checks, missing dates, and a deadline.

But then, miraculously, it was finished! One hundred pages, over 500 photographs, and a permanent record of my mom's history.

It was oh, so satisfying to see it arrive at Mom's as a hard-cover book, and to see the look on her face when she opened it at our Christmas celebration.

Of course, this project only whet my appetite for more. There are still so many photos! And there's still my dad's side of the family to explore!!!

Illustration Friday # 18: SHADES (of spring)

Shades of Spring © Cheryl Kirk Noll

I did a new piece this week, loosely using my niece's husband and son as models. The prompt word is shades, so I'm calling it "Shades of Spring." I did it with my "new style," hand-painted figures done in watercolor,  and photographs manipulated in Photoshop.

It's been a glorious week here in New England... maybe even a bit too hot yesterday. Daffodils are up, and the ones in the illustration are from my garden (but not this year.)

Hope everyone is enjoying the early spring. We can cross our fingers and hope we don't get frost next week.

Illustration Friday # 17: YIELD

© Illustration by Cheryl Kirk Noll

Once again, I've been remiss in my attempts to get a new piece out for Illustration Friday, so here is another older piece for the word YIELD.

This was an illustration for a story about a woman homesteader in the 1920's. Among the mountainload of problems that homesteaders faced was the dreaded "plague of locusts" (the swarming phase of grasshoppers), which could strip a farmer's summer yield in minutes. What a heartbreak that must have been.

This piece was one of the first where I employed the use of Photoshop. I hope that you will find it difficult to see how I cloned, copied, and re-sized after painting the first half of this piece. Did I save time?

Hmmmmm. I think so, but the Photoshop process is time-consuming and involves drawing and design skills, too, so I don't want folks to think it was a cinch.

Here's a close-up of part of the piece.

©Illustration by Cheryl Kirk Noll

Hopefully, next week will YIELD a new piece for Illustration Friday.

Illustration Friday # 14: TWIRL

I played with character and movement this week. I started with sketches of children twirling, and this went through many incarnations. Still not sure if this is my favorite, but it's 11:30 on Thursday night...  the next Illustration Friday is knocking on my door...

Illustration Friday #12: GROUNDED

After all the family time during the holidays, I'm back to trying my hand at new work for Illustration Friday. This week's prompt word was "grounded." Watching my grand-niece, Zoe on the cusp of walking, I was inspired to illustrate this amazing process.

Gus is Grounded! Illustration ©Cheryl Kirk Noll

I am taking inspiration from a baby's tenacity with this task, and sticking to my task of working with watercolor and Photoshop. 

Illustration Friday # 4: SCATTERED

The prompt word for Illustration Friday this week was "scattered." Leaves, ants, seeds, my brain... so much to choose from with this word. I chose birds.This is my hedge, re-imagined. I always wanted to have a gate it it.

Scattered, © Cheryl Kirk Noll

I figured out how to put a gate in perspective, and put the grass on a curve. The child and birds are painted, everything else is a photo manipulated in Photoshop. I felt that this one one of my more successful attempts at this style. 

Illustration Friday #3: CONTRAPTION

I thought this word would be perfect for the new art/photo combination, but it turned out to be more challenging, and I'm not entirely happy with it. I started by looking at Rube Goldberg cartoons for inspiration. They're wonderful, but didn't get my mind going. This just feels too stiff, but I'm glad I took a stab at it.

Contraption

Illustration Friday #2: HIBERNATE

For the second week of Illustration Friday, the prompt word was "hibernate." I looked up animals that hibernate, and chose the ever adorable Hedgehog. 

I did a page of sketches of hedgehogs first (they are sooo cute!), after doing Will Terry's tutorial on character design. (what makes a hedgehog a hedgehog?... pointy nose, oval body, and spines)

And how could I best incorporate the style of combining watercolor and photos, using Photoshop? And add a little twist of humor? 
The result:

Hedgehogs apparently hibernate in piles of leaves, making them vulnerable to disturbances of all sorts, so friendly folks in England sometimes provide lovely hedgehog homes for them.© Cheryl Kirk Noll

Illustration Friday #1: FEROCIOUS

Since I just started the blog, I'm trying to catch up a bit. 

I've began doing Illustration Friday. This website puts out a prompt word each week, and hundreds of artists (from kids to pros) illustrate it and upload their photos. 

My first week, the word was "ferocious." I tried it with the new style, combining watercolors and photos, and a less realistic approach to people.

Little girls can be ferocious. Ask any parent!

Learning curve

Falling Leaves

I'd been doing loose sketches of kids, and decided to incorporate a few of them into a fall raking scene. Trying for a playful look, I used photos of leaves and oversized them, a photo of a fence, and "spherized" it in Photoshop. I learned to mask and use a few filters. (I'm finally getting used to my new Wacom tablet.) The children and tree are painted in watercolors. I also painted the background, but decided on photos instead.

Learning

Dress-up girls

I'm playing with my art. Here's my first try. I want to move towards a style geared to younger kids; less realistic, more fun, playful in perspective and sizing. 

The original sketch had a dog, a baby, another kid and a bed, but this is what I ended up with. 

I'm doing the figures in watercolor, and dropping in and manipulating photographs in Photoshop for many of the objects and clothing.

I don't know where it will go, but feedback is welcome.