So I've got a new digital painting today:





This is a completely different style from what I normally do. In this piece, I was looking for a storybook look- bright colours, bold sharp shapes and small simple details. I went for this look because of the 'story' that was being told in the piece.

This idea came to me, as many of my ideas do, in my sleep. I awoke with an image of a child inadvertently waking a monster by mistakenly pulling on its tail. I didn't know what the monster or the child would look like. After a few sketches, I came up with this concept. I chose a little boy instead of a girl to add a little more interest (a girl picking a flower is more obvious).
I made this in Photoshop, but I used the pen tool for all of the shapes. The gradient shading was done with a soft round brush and selections from the pen shapes.

If you're a child of the 80's like me, you are very familiar with Little Golden Books. While I was creating this piece, I kept thinking about these books and I was trying to bring in some of these elements, but with a modern 'me' twist. One element I desperately wanted to incorporate was the gold and black pattern binding on every Little Golden Book. So I chose a gold colour and then used the colour picking site kuler to choose the rest of the colours. To echo the black pattern in the gold binding, I added a subtle pattern to the sky and grass.


I think I'll call it "A Nap and a Snack." ;-P