Monday Night, Bath Time!

Summer time in my apartment is tough for Maxwell. I only have a small window A/C unit in my bedroom and for some reason, he doesn't like hanging out in there during the day very much (maybe it's too loud for him?). He happily chills in the living room that is usually hot and stuffy and humid because the windows are open to help circulate the air. By the end of the week, Maxwell is stinky from all of his sweat. Monday nights in my apartment are consequentially deemed BATH NIGHT, to Maxwell's great dismay.

Flying Kites

I went picnic'ing at Prospect Park with a few friends and my cousin on Saturday. It was the most beautiful summer weather out. And there was just enough of a breeze to fly kites. I haven't flown one in years. The experience was exhilarating and I had a great rush of child-like excitement and energy running around trying to get my kite to go as high as it could get. 

Interrupting Girl Illustration Process

Now that I've submitted the last illustration for The Girls' Q&A Book on Friendship I figured now is the best time to release me WORK IN PROGRESS video series. I'll begin with "Interrupting Friend". 

Most of these videos will be showing me doing the clean up work that was required between what I submitted last summer for the dummy and what I submitted this past month for the final published book. In some cases, a lot of clean up work and redrawing was necessary to bring the illustration to the consistent level of quality my publisher and I agreed we wanted to see for the final book. 

In this case a lot of cleanup work needed for removing the 'sketchy' pencil lines in the clothes, skin and hair, a little bit of redrawing, and tidying up the grey values.

Before (last summer's submission) & After (final submission)

Enjoy & goodnight! 

Love, Erica

A little bit of process from The Girl's Q/A Book: Friendship

Hello Panda followers!

Gosh has it been a year and forever! This past year has been a whirl wind. I now am full time-employed by HarperCollins Publishers as the DESIGN ASSISTANT to the Associate Creative Art Director of the Picture books group, Martha Rago. And I am very happy to be working in the HarperCollins Children's Design Department for a little over a year now.

Besides the addition to a grabbing a very "adult-like" day job, I am now blessed to be working on a book due to be independently published come late September/early October, just in time for your elementary-middle grade daughters, friends, and family to go back to school. Going back to school is a fresh onslaught of female, pheromone-induced, friendly drama!

Well, Annie Fox and I have a wonderful book for parents and adults to share with their kids that will help guide you and them through the difficulties of making and keeping friends. Our new book, my first published body of illustrations, is called The Girl's Q&A Book: Friendship.

Here is a sneak peek into a small portion of the process work that goes into one single illustration that headlines the letter/chapter heading of the book:

ONE - Annie give me letters from real life girls that are having a hard time dealing with their friends. In this example we have a girl who has a new "cooler" friend who isn't quite so nice to other people. It bothers the writer that her "cool", new friend is a mean person, but she still is excited that the "cool" girl even bothers to acknowledge her as a "friend". 

Here are some concept sketches I whipped up based on the letter writer's problem. I tried to go for very dramatic moments where the emotion is at it's peak. Can you tell I got a little overboard with my action/drama/emotion lines in these first sketches? :)

 

TWO - To give Annie an idea of how I was thinking of "coloring" the line drawings with greyscale values, and to give her a feel for how I envisioned the final drawings, I did more refined versions of 2 of my more favorite sketches.

 

THREE - As it turns out, Annie didn't like the sketches that were my favorite and we decided to develop the sketch she preferred (It's her book, so she's the boss! Plus, I tend to look at all my sketches with the potential of being great). No biggie. Here I refined the drawing. With a little more art direction from Annie, this is the drawing that I started to work on for the final illustration. 

FOUR - If you click the image thumbnail below and look at these screenshots more closely, you can see how I thought the first round of "coloring" would be the final. WRONG! This is not often the case when it comes to my freelance illustration projects. From what I've seen this past year working in the industry, it is most definitely NOT the case when it comes to book illustrations published through publishing houses. 

You can go through 2, 3, 4, sometimes even more iterations than that for just one illustration -- as many revisions as it takes to get the illustration just right. And if your art director and you, (and the editor and the sales/marketing team, and everyone else who seems to have an opinion), work well together and communicate the feelings, emotions, and the idea that you want to get across through your illustration between the two of you frequently, usually the multiple rounds of revisions will produce a very worthwhile finished piece of art. 

Final illustration is not shown here. You'll have to wait for the book to see how the final product came out! :P 

FIVE - I turn in the final illustration and the final to print art files over to the publisher/designers.

Sometimes, I get lucky and the universe throws me a bone. I set up the right scenario/setting in the first sketch. That does not mean to say that this will be the final illustration. 

As you can see below, Annie and I decided to change up the composition/layout of this drawing and flip flop the focus on the "potential friend-making" aspect of the illustration, and not put as much emphasis on the gossiping, isolating "cool" girls. 

Again, this is not the final illustration. 

Buy the book when it comes out to see all the final illustrations! ;)

That's all I have to show for last night's work session. I hope showing my process and how the stages of revisions go for children's book illustrations has been helpful, if not at least interesting to read through. More to come from this book and more. 

I'm trying my best to put in more effort into posting something little every day of my work. This blog post isn't so little, I admit, but I figure since this was the first blog post in over a year, you guys deserved it! ;)

'Til next time!

Love,

Erica

INCURSION: Opening Night + the Final Paintings

Hi Everyone,

I'll keep this post short. Opening night, January 17, 2013 was amazing! I'm sorry to have posted these paintings so late after the actual show, but that just goes to show you that you should come out to see them in person at the gallery! Anyways, opening night was so full of people and the show was so well received. I got there 10 min after doors opened and it was literally packed to capacity. I was literally shuffling with the crowd to see the other illustrators' work too. And it was full the whole night! With the free Barney's coffee, apple crumble cake, and the open bar, it honestly felt more like a party than it did a gallery opening. 

Everyone was so friendly and willing to talk to me about my paintings. I mingled and was able to make some new artist friends too, which was basically the best part of the night. :D But if you haven't still seen the show it'll be open til February 15. CityArts Factory hours are 10AM til 6PM, Mon-SAt. 

The original paintings are for sale, each $100. They are all framed and matted, 5"x 11", watercolor and gouache. So if you're interested contact me via email first at: ericadechavez@gmail.com and then on my cell phone if you just can't wait to have them: (407) 572-7047. 

Okay that's all I've got to say. I'm preparing for the Society of Children's Book Writer's and Illustrator's Winter Conference here in Manhattan this weekend. So I'll see all you cool children's book enthusiasts there! Be sure to look out for my portfolio and dummy and print collateral at the portfolio showcase on Saturday afternoon! Can't wait to see and meet you all!

Love, Erica

INCURSION Final Drawings: The Process Behind The Finished Drawings

Hello again! 

Thank you all who came out to support the INCURSION: An Illustration Show this past Thurs, Jan. 17th at The Orlando CityArts Factory. I could not have even begun to imagine how well received it was going to be! There were so many people out opening night, it honestly felt like a big party rather than a gathering a an art gallery. Thank you to all my friends and family who came to support me and my art, I cannot thank you enough, every hug and every word of congratulations helped to fuel my sleep deprived and weary mind and body. And to all who were new faces who took an interest in my artwork and took the time to talk to me that night, thank you too and I hope that you continue to take a great interest in my art and my work in the future!

For now I'd like to talk more about my processes that lead me to the final paintings that you all saw that night. Here are the final drawings that I did for the paintings. It seems rather tedious and very detail oriented and at times I even felt that maybe it was a little TOO time consuming. But in the end, I was again satisfied with how much time I put into the planning of how things would look and feel and how the character would all come into play with the storytelling of this mini-series of paintings. 

All of the drawings were done with simple graphite pencils (HB, 2B, 4B, 6B, 8B, and an Ebony pencil).

But even before I got to this point in my final drawings, much more planning, downscaling, and thought went into them such as a list of feelings, words, and lists of descriptive adjectives that I wanted to convey through the paintings. I started with the quote that inspired me to do these paintings first and worked from there. Then I proceeded to spew out the thought into very rough thumbnails with no real regard to format, consistency, and thought of what things, places, and characters would look like. It's really just to get all the good, the bad, and the ugly out of the way.

Now before I could move further into refining the sketches I knew I had to get a good, final look to the main characters of the story: the princess in the palace, the princess after she ran away, the princess in the forest, the owl boy, and the princess' stewardesses. 

I drew inspiration from video games, animated movies, and old children's picture books I owned/read when I was young to form the final look of the character. Then after this I refined my initial thumbnail drawings into a more uniform format, consistent dimensions and and more stylized themes that I wanted to appear throughout the series (leaves, trees, reappearing owls, architecture). I tried to make each painting as diverse in lighting, time of day, and setting from each other as possible and so my original 9 sketches got narrowed down to 6 paintings that I felt would move the story along at a quick, even pace throughout each painting.

More WIP and process work to come!

Love, Erica.

P.S. If you're in Orlando, FL. the INCURSION show is still up at The CityArts Factory until February 15 , so be sure to stop by and see the show. There are 19 other amazing local illustrators that really made the show so diverse and inspiring. The gallery hours are 11 AM - 6 PM , 7 days a week @ 29 South Orange Avenue, Orlando, FL. 

INCURSION into Another World: Gallery Show Poster

Preliminary thumbnail sketches (left) and revised thumbnail sketches (right).

2nd round of thumbnail sketches for the decided pandora's box concept.

Panned out view (left), worm's eye view (center), bird's eye view (right) and labels for bird's eye view (below). You can tell the last view was fail since I had to tell not show the viewer what was going on. Haha. But I wanted to see if I could try to capture that view anyways. It was hard to convey, needless to say.

Visual development sketches of objects/symbolism I wanted to specify in the drawing. Dragons to capture the yang (darkness) of a new world; lanterns to be the yin (light) of the world quite literally; the cherry blossom tree to ground the piece back to earth but is a symbol of duality of it's also likeness to clouds (the sky) along with its association with the tree of life and death itself; the kites to symbolize flight and exploration of a new world; the butterflies again bringing death but also encouraging symbols of accepting change gracefully; floating lanterns symbolizing celebration of life; and the tree banners symbolizing celebration as well. 

All these symbolic icons were chosen to illustrate a balance of good/bad, light/dark that comes in every world. I wanted to illustrate the essence of Incursion and encourage viewers to explore the new world gracefully and with courage. 

The word INCURSION itself meaning a sudden, brief and aggressive entering into a new territory or world. 

In progress (left) and final color studies (right).

Work-In-Progress of the tree.

WIP of the dragon and plane and inverting some values to explore the possibilities of lighting in the piece.

WIP adding in the boxes, lanterns, kites and butterflies.

Detail shots of the Dragon tail (top left), Dragon head (top right) and a fan service panty shot (bottom center).

Greeting Night/Early Morning Pandas,

So this is the process work for the poster design of INCURSION a gallery show that will be showing at City Arts Factory. I'm going to have a few series pieces in the show myself and will have a few friends from the area of Orlando showcasing as well. Please come out to see the show as it will be open for a whole month from Jan 17-Feb 15 and it is totally FREE. Opening night will be amazing, all the featured artists will be there, food, and fun! Also we will be selling extra prints of the poster opening night as well, so come get an autographed copy of it while supplies last! 

Spread the word fellow Floridian Pandas and I'll see you there come January 17. I'm so excited! :D 

Come back soon to my blog for some preview WIP of my pieces that will be in the show this whole next month leading up to the opening of the show. 

Love, Erica

P.S. Visit and "Like" INCURSION's Facebook page here: http://www.pandaerica.com/2012/12/incursion-into-another-world-gallery.html

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