Troll Lullaby

I just drew an entire Troll Family for the School Magazine - well, Troll Father doesn't seem to be around, but maybe he's working late at the Dung Heap, or maybe Troll Mother is a hardworking single parent. Anyway, the text is a traditional Swedish Song, sung by a troll mother to her eleven babies, and beautifully translated by the Art Director at the School Magazine. She's Swedish herself and so grew up with the traditional Scandanavian stories about Trolls and Gnomes, which are near and dear to her heart. It was really tricky trying to fit eleven sleeping baby trolls into the tiny bit of available space around the text, and we had a few takes to try and get the look and feel of the trolls right. I did the final painting completely digitally, using Photoshop, and took a series of step by step shots so you can watch a timelapse demo of how I painted the Troll Mother. It's the first time I've tried this, so it's a bit wobbly, but I might try again soon and get better at it!

Troll Lullaby from Sarah Davis on Vimeo.

So, now you've seen the final painting, here's a little bit of background on the process we went through. The first rough sketch I did was far too monstery, because Scandinavian Trolls try as hard as they can to be just like humans, even though they usually fail miserably. So I had to make them a bit cuter. Also, mother trolls apparently don't hang their babies up  - instead concientious troll mothers tuck their little offshoots in bed then tie them tenderly in place with their tails. Here's my first go -

Because these guys weren't close enough to traditional trolls, the art director sent me links to some cool videos to get me in the mood - here's a gorgeous Norwegian singer performing the traditional song (in Norwegian, of course!):

And here's a clip from a Swedish cartoon series about a family of trolls:

I also remember reading the most incredible book on gnomes ever written when I was a kid - I read it to death, and I still have some of the poor dismembered pages. I'll have to get myself another copy, because I think it will be just as fascinating to me now that I'm a toothless old crone. It was created by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, and the artwork was amazing. Their trolls were real baddies though...

Obviously my trolls were going to be different, because they had to be a bit cute, and because I can't paint this well! Aren't those trolls wonderfully gross and menacing? You can find copies of the book on Amazon, if you're interested.

And here's another artist who paints wonderful trolls - John Bauer.

Perhaps you could invent a troll of your own. If you do, email me a copy and I'll post it here for everyone to see.

Marmaduke Duck and the Marmalade Jam

May I introduce you to Marmaduke, jam-making duck extraordinaire? These are some of the roughs and character studies for one of the (many!) books I'm working on at the moment. It's written by Juliette McIver, and I think it's one of the craziest, funniest rhyming texts I've read. It'll be published by Scholastic next year. I'll post more bits and pieces as I get further along with it.

Work in progress...

I've just finished doing the first very rough roughs for the book I'm working on at the moment, The Fierce Little Woman and the Wicked Pirate by Joy Cowley. At this stage, all I've really done is work out what goes on which page and how the action will develop - the drawings are still pretty horrible. But I find it really useful to do the roughs of each spread at the actual size that the finished book will be, and to blu-tack all the spreads to the wall so I can see the entire story at a glance. So here is my wall... it's hell on the paintwork!

New Theatre Poster

I've just finished the poster for Marian Street Theatre's next production - Beauty and the Beast. I had to do it really quickly - I had less than 2 days - so worked out a superfast technique that seemed to work nicely for me. First I did an underdrawing, which is red chalk dust brushed onto gesso on paper with a wet brush - you can layer up the intensity of the tones, and erase away the highlights, and soften the edges with extra water. I think I like the underdrawing more than the final painting. Then I had my first proper go with my new Genesis paints, layering about 7-8 coats over the underdrawing. It was so fast - the paints stayed totally workable for as long as I needed them to, and then I could dry them instantly with my trusty heat gun. The consistency is nice - quite soft and buttery, and easily diluted with medium to create transparent glazes. I have a couple of reservations - the colours don't behave quite the way I'm used to, and it dries a little chalky, but that might be because I haven't got the balance of paint and thinner right. Anyway, here's the final finished thingummyjig....

In the beginning...

In my last post I was ready to launch into experimenting with Genesis, and I just had my first attempt at using them. On the whole... wow.  They could be very, very useful.

They do feel a lot like oils, and have that nice glossy oil finish when they dry - the texture takes a bit of getting used to at first, because they come out of the pot like clay, but if you work them with a palette knife for 15 seconds or so, they go very buttery and seem to stay that way. If you left them for a long time, you'd just need to rework them a bit if they went stiff.

First of all I used the 5 colours from my starter pack to mix a few of the colours listed on the very helpful little recipe sheet that Genesis provided - got shades close to Payne's Gray, Light cadmium,  etc.

Then I experimented on a little cheap pad of primed canvas that I've had lying around for ages.  What started as random blocks of colour turned into a strange little seascape with annoyingly puffy clouds. The whole thing measures about 15x12 cm, and took less than half an hour. I did it in 5 layers, drying each with the hot air gun in between. It was SO fast - the paint dries instantly as soon as it reaches the right heat and once it's dry nothing will shift it off the canvas, short of a blade.  I think these paints will make a big difference to turnaround time when I'm working on a book deadline. And all the colours I mixed are still sitting patiently on my palette, waiting for me. And they will never dry, until I tell them to! Oh, the giddy power of it all!

I've taken some process photos of the different layers, so you can see the progress of this little sketch. Give the animation a chance to load...

(PS: I'm also posting this for Illustration Friday because the topic is "Modify", and this is me trying to modify my technique. I know, I know, it's cheating...)