Thursday 26 June 2014

A Penguin in Acapulco


I'm been continuing work on my penguin artwork for Spider magazine. I didn't quite get it finished on the 2nd day, as I suspected. Not far off though. Mainly the butterfly and the palm leaves to do. This was how it was looking at the end of Day 2:


Unfortunately, once I had done the butterfly, I had to fix it. I couldn't draw the palm leaf fronds on top of the background without doing this, as the paper was too packed with pastel to take another layer.

As you know, I hate fixative because it messes things up: everything goes a bit dingy (and strangely, while everything else gets darker, the blacks go less dark). Once it was dry, I had to spend a while re-lightening certain areas, then adding back the darkest shadows on the penguin. At least fixing the base layer will make the artwork slightly less vulnerable.

I had to turn everything upside down to do the writing on the sun cream. REALLY fiddly. Hope it is legible, so people get the joke:



There's another wee visual joke on the sandcastles, which you might not have noticed: I have used the Antarctic flag, since that's where Mo has come from. 

The palm leaves were a bit I was not looking forward too, so I left them until last. I knew they would pull it all together, but also knew they could seriously muck things up if I wasn't very careful. This was how things looked at lunchtime on Day 3 - finished at last. 


The courier is coming to pick it up any time now, to wing it across the ocean to America. Let's hope they like it! The Penguin Who Didn't Like Snow is due for publication in the November/December edition of Spider magazine.


5 comments:

Jennifer Tzivia MacLeod said...

Well, okay, I am a sucker for penguins in all forms (as you can see in the sample poem in this post about writing kids' verse!), but this is a particularly delightful penguin. I love seeing how the process unfolds, and yes, the little jokes, too. :-D

Lynne the Pencil said...

Thank you Jennifer!

Pascale said...

So much fun, Lynne. And the colors! Just perfect.

Veronica said...

That's my favourite kind of illustration, once where there's always something else to spot! I'm also super impressed by your ability not to smudge pastel! Fab stuff.

Lynne the Pencil said...

Thanks you guys. The publisher just received it and she loves it too (phew!).

Veronica - the secret of not smudging is having your desk at an angle. Your arm doesn't rest on your work in the way it does when things are flat, which really helps.