Digital Painting for the Complete Beginner in stores now!

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or your local book store.
A great review from Digital Artist magazine too!

Illustrator's Day

Catch me at Illustrator's Day this weekend at the New Hampshire Institute of Art. I will be divulging my top Corel Painter 12 painting secrets. Walk-ins are still being accepted.

Altered Cabinet Card

Working on some altered art this week for my next book proposal. I love taking old cabinet cards and transforming them into something new. This Victorian lady is Opera star, Alwina Vallerina and I found her over at the Cabinet Card Gallery. 

Now she is the High Priestess - one of the major arcana cards in the Tarot. 

Cool Textures

Found these beautiful textures while doing some research for my next book proposal. Please read the licensing information before using. 

Corel Painter 12 Release

Last weekend I demoed the new Painter 12 release at the New England SCBWI conference. I have to say this upgrade is the best yet. It turns out those crazy folks over at Corel decided that it was time to take Painter from ugly baby to prom queen. And I am so mad at them for that! Why? Because this week I finished by book on Digital Painting to be released next year by Watson Guptill and now....I have to completely rewrite the whole darn thing...very quicky!

Check out some of the Corel Painter gallery tutorials.

I am now going to crawl into my dark cave and weep like an abandoned baby. I will share some of my favorite new features once the tears dry. (insert melodramatic organ music here). 

Come see all my mistakes

Catch me this week over at Kathy Temean's amazing blog. I am doing something I love to do on school visits - showing all my heinous mistakes. It isn't always pretty, but I hope it encourages other digital artists to never give up. 

IF: Mail

This painting was inspired by my daughter who recently figured out that Santa has a mailing address. The list keeps getting longer and longer. I don't know how she is going to fit it in the mail box.

Illustration Friday: Burning....desire

This is my portrayal of Scaramouche and his burning desire for Colombina. It is a scene from the Commedia dell'arte. 

Illustration Friday: Racing

Working on some rough sketches for Holiday cards. These kids are off to the races!

Illustration Friday: Acrobat

This is  Lillian Leitzel from Who put the B in the Ballyhoo?

I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat in stores now!

Hot off the presses and in stores now! You can win a copy at the Raucous Royals Blog

More posts coming soon

I have truly neglected this blog for some time now mostly because video tutorials seem like such a faster way to learn digital painting and I am just not up with the technology yet. I do have some old school step by step posts planned for creating illustrator patterns. Stay tuned...

In the mean time, I write almost daily over at my regular blog: The Raucous Royals

Painter II ready for download

I have been going through the new features of Painter 11 this week and have decided my favorite new tools are the resizable mixer pallette (now you can make your mixer pallette REALLY BIG) and the Real Chalk brush. (it picks up your tilt like real chalk medium). I am going to be posting a new tutorial soon. In the meantime, I have a tutorial coming out in Painter magazine and I will post a link to subscribe as soon as I know which issue.

A special Thanks to the KidzBookBuzz Blog Tour

I am a little late posting this, but a special thanks to everyone who participated in the KidzBookBuzz Blog tour for the release of my new book, The Raucous Royals. I especially enjoyed the fact that I found so many amazing blogs in the process.

Thank you to:

1. The 160 Acre Woods
   
   
2. All About Children’s Books
   


3. Becky’s Book Reviews
   


4. Cafe of Dreams
   


5. Dolce Bellezza
   
   
6. Fireside Musings
   


7. The Friendly Book Nook
   


8. Homeschool Buzz
   


9. Hyperbole
   


10. KidzBookBuzz.com
    


11. Maw Books Blog
    


12. Never Jam Today
    


13. Quiverfull Family
    


14. Reading is my Superpower
    


15. Small World Reads
    


16. SMS Book Reviews

I am going to post a link to some of the interviews over at The Raucous Royals Blog as soon as I get a chance.

One author's way of coping

Author Brad Meltzer will definitely peak your interest with his video on bad book reviews. I prefer eating a gallon of ice cream.

Stealing Caravaggio

Sorry for missing last month’s post. I have been caught up working on my next book, I feel better with a frog in my throat, the final cover for the fantastic Houdini Series by Thomas Lalicki (shown here) and lastly my new history blog ....which I swear you will love even if you hate history.

I do have a really quick Painter tutorial and it’s one that I think everyone can use.

Painter has many hidden tricks that go unused, but one of my favorite is right in the Color Sets palette. Have you ever opened that sketch to be painted and been stuck as to what color palette to use? Well, if you are really lazy (like me) you can steal colors from the masters. For this tutorial, we are going to steal from Caravaggio.

1. If you don’t see the Color Sets palette – select WINDOW/ COLOR PALETTES / COLOR SET. The Color Set looks like a bunch of swatches similar to how Photoshop displays them.

1. 2. Open an image up that you feel has a good range of color or the correct colors.
3. 3. Go to the Color Set , Click on the little arrow to the right, Select “New Color Set from Image”

Painter will now make a color set from that image. That’s it. Paint with Caravaggio’s colors.

This color set might not have every color that you want. You can also add colors to your color set by clicking on the little color swatch add symbol at the bottom (circled in red here)

You can also mix your own colors up in the mixer pad and then again click on the little arrow to the right and select “ New Color Set from Mixer Pad”

Let me know if this is helpful. And if you don’t have Painter, then just download a 30 day-trial to check it out from the banner on the right.

Imagelexia. How to draw with a misplaced thumb

Reversing numbers is a peculiarity we all share. Even reversing letters happens sometimes in our addled brains. If we do it often, we have a fancy name for this phenomenon…dyslexia. But what about artists who reverse images in their mind?

Lets call it imagelexia because it makes me feel much better to give a name to my mental defects. I don’t know how it happens, but every time I draw hands, toes…even faces they get reversed on paper. (In my head, they looked perfectly normal.) Luckily, my critique group has caught COUNTLESS paintings of poor people with their thumb on the wrong side of their hand. My image of the Changs for Who Put the B in the Ballyhoo? had gone through proofing and legal and all the other smart people who are supposed to catch mistakes, but no one had caught the reversed thumb except my faithful critique group.

One of my critique group members, Penny Weber always draws expressive, beautiful hands. She has inspired me to do better. No more excuses. No more laziness. I vow to improve my hands. (Toes are another matter because feet really gross me out) And you faithful readers of this blog (all 3 of you) should also share in my quest for better hands…

Here are some tools:

1. Here is a website with 206 images of hands in art. Pure hand inspiration.

2. Drawing Dynamic Hands by Burne Hogarth
This is one of my favorite books for drawing hands in motion.

3. Here is a short video from Matt's Illustration demonstrating how to draw better hands. Matt advises to draw the thumb last. Makes sense.

Let me know if you have other tools to get those digits looking pretty.

Quick Announcement...

I have been greatly neglecting this blog, but I do have some tutorials planned for the next couple of months. In the meantime, please stop by the Raucous Royals blog and get your weekly dose of rumors, scandals and facinating royalty. Your feedback is always appreciated.

Your Pocket Watch is Ticking....

2 more days to head over to Scandalous Women and enter to win a copy of The Raucous Royals. Entering is as easy as losing your head in Henry VIII's court. Just comment on the Jane Boleyn post and...Voila you're in.

Win a FREE copy of the Raucous Royals!

Throw on your petticoat, grab your parasol, button up your britches and rush on over to Picture Book Junkies to enter to win a FREE signed copy of The Raucous Royals.

Watch the Book Trailer>>

Bestill My Beating Heart...

The Ballyhoo has been “hearted” by the amazing, death-defying talents of krisztina maros at sketch pause.

Here are my 7 blogs that may change your life in no particular order

1. Barbara Johansen Newman’s always feisty blog – Cats and Jammers Studio

2. Author and blogger extrordinaire Cynthia Leitich Smith whose recent vampire book, Tantalize and spooky blog will leave your hair permanently standing on air.

3. Linda Silvestri whose blog has received countless blogging awards and still deserves 10 more for making me laugh on a regular basis.

4 & 5. Kathy Weller and Monica Lee for making me want to tap into to my innocent, whimsical and far less darker, vodka-drinking child.

6. The World Famous Circus Star, Adam Rex whose work makes me as giddy as school girl with a Jonas Brothers crush.

7. And last but not least....the best kept secret in blogging history is Don's American miniature portrait blog and European Miniature Portrait Blog whose postings are a treasure trove for any illustrator or writer researching historical hairstyles and costumes.

The rules for this award-takeaway are:

1. The winner can put the logo on their blog

2. Link the person you received your award from

3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs

4. Put links of those blogs on yours

5. Leave a message on the nominee's blog letting them know about their award