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.