work in progress

Common ~ 1

| kirsti

Pencil on wood 8″ x 10″

This is the first stages of a painting of some sort. Not entirely sure where I’m going with this. It’s an experiment and hopefully it’ll help me get back into this painting thing that I’ve been too busy to do/avoiding.

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Book Sneak Peek ~ Finished, Packed and Shipped

| kirsti

Finished illustrations - on stretchers
Finished canvases still on the stretcher bars.

Early in July I finished the illustrations for my latest children’s picture book project Catching Time, written by Rachna Gilmore (Red Deer Press, pub.date Spring 2008). The illustrations were finally packed up and shipped out yesterday.

IMG_2342_s.jpg
It’s been a long process. This is what my studio, and the weather, looked like at the beginning of the painting part of the project (in November ’06)…


…and this is what it looked like at the end (July ’07).

Finished illustrations
Canvas cut off the stretcher bars and ready for shipping.

I’ll post more photos of the illustrations, as well as photos of the illustration process once the book is out.

After about 2 1/2 years of book work, peppered with other projects slotted in here and there, I’m officially on my kid’s book illustration break for a while and it feels really, really good. While I’m book burnt-out, I’m not yet painting burnt-out and will be trying to find a few days here and there to get busy on some of my own work.

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Book Sneak Peek ~ Draw, Redraw, Paint, Redraw

| kirsti

Draw, Redraw, paint, redraw

A lot of reworking goes on at various stages of the illustration process. If I’m working in oil, it happens a lot during the painting process. If it bugs me, it gets scribbled over until it bugs me a little less. It’s inevitable that some things will never be quite right – but there’s a printing schedule to adhere to so stuff has to be pried out of my hands and shipped out the door at some point.

The colours in this photo are a bit grey. It’s a much cheerier palette in person. Let’s hope that comes through in the final scans.

This is another detail from a page in the current book-in-progress.

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Book Sneak Peek ~ Underwater

| kirsti

In the fall of 2006 I finished the illustrations for my 4th picture book. It’s not out yet so I’ll keep the specifics quiet until then. But in the meantime, I’ll post some sneak peek details of the process and the bits and bobs that went into developing the illustrations.

The underwater reference photo is part of a series I took with a cheap disposable underwater camera. Although shot specifically as reference for the book, I like the look of them so much that I have further plans for the photographs. The trickle of watery paint is part of my palette for the underwater scene. I brightened the colours a bit since this book is more about clear light and less about murk

Water, whether it makes up a ditch, a pond, a lake, an ocean or even a puddle, hides wonderful collections of life. I’ve always been fascinated by bodies of water and as a kid spent endless hours searching out crayfish, frogs and sticklebacks in the drainage ditches that surrounded our farm.

When I had a good look at this series of photographs I noticed a few contained sticklebacks, almost invisible in the cloudy water.

Submerged (2)

Paint (6)

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