Watching Paint Dry

A look at my painting process

I wrote a pretty extensive post about how I started writing and illustrating children’s books here. I promise this will be shorter.

For those who think my paintings/drawings/whateveryouwanttocallthem look pretty, I am going to break down the process real quick.

1. A real loose sketch on paper

Loose sketch of
a dolphin—happened to be my daughters favorite
stuffed animal

2. Redraw that sketch on Dura-lar

this version is 4-5 times larger than the original sketch — and usually looks fairly different

3. Draw over the sketch in oil stick

the drawings usually change here due to the different line weight

3. Add pigment (I use watered down acrylic paint)

this is the stage where chaos can happen with pigments running over the oil stick into other colors

4. Let it dry, this is where the beautiful textures happen.

these take a few days to completely dry

5. Um, there is no 5 — those 4 steps are it