Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Laying the groundwork



As I have eluded to in some previous posts, I have been busy working on the groundwork for a new children's book that will be out later this year. After a number of weeks in the studio working on the character designs, illustration layout and sketching for the entire interior, I have been working on the actual "ground" in which the illustrations will be painted on. The only problem, is using gel medium to randomly paste lots and lots of little ripped up pieces of magazines. Now I know, you may wonder what and why I do this. It is for the great texture that comes out in the end product. In the many times I have used gesso and just gel medium to produce texture, I just haven't been satisfied with the outcome as much as this process. For those of you who have seen the owl book of mine, you will know of the texture I am talking about. So, the good thing is the end product is a great illustration with wonderful texture. The bad is the fact that I have only 8 of these grounds complete and I have 18 more to go. Anyone want to come over and join in the fun?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, Shawn, I had no idea that your paintings had collages underneath. That definitely explains the texture of your paintings - I was wondering how you did that! Awesome!

Shawn McCann said...

Shhhhhhhh! Be very very quiet! Actually, if you look in the owl book you can see areas where the text blocks pop thru the painting. It is just something that I started a while back and have fun doing! Thanks for stopping by.

Janets Planet said...

Hmmm. Would it help to rip a bunch of paper into a quart of glaze and then lay them out one by one? Or employ some of the neighborhood kids? :-)

Shawn McCann said...

Probably Janet. But then my therapy of ripping apart the paper would be gone. As for dumping the paper in the jar, I have tried that and it makes quite the mess. This way I can have a little more control of the texture, placement and also the mess.

Meagan said...

Intense.