Womanthology: Space #1

One of my cool summer projects this year: working as comic book artist for the anthology “Womanthology: Space” issue #1 through IDW Publishing.  I partnered with writer Sandy King Carpenter on her story “Dead Again".  It was just released on September 19, 2012.

There is some preview material from issue #1, here:
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/09/19/womanthology-space-1-preview-ming-doyle-stephanie-hans-jordie-bellaire/

Quote:
The preview material...includes excerpts from "Waiting for Mr. Roboto" by Bonnie Burton and Jessica Hickman, which depicts the life of a bored space-waitress; "Dead Again" by Sandy King Carpenter with Tanja Wooten, which is a kind of ghost story in space; and "Scaling Heaven" by Stephanie Hans and Alison Ross, a speculative piece about a race to put the first woman on the moon. Not included but available in the issue is an exceptionally cute story by Ming Doyle and Jordie Bellaire called "The Adventures of Princess Plutonia," which puts a fun spin on the John Carter/Adam Strange trope, as well as the first installment of "Space Girls," a recurring humor strip by Stacie Ponder that imagines an all-woman crew of Star Trekkian-style spaceship that's actually my favorite bit of this ambitious new release. All stories (except Ponder's strip) are lettered by Rachel Deering.

This project was something different for me, a ghost story set in space; but I definitely enjoyed the challenge and gained some valuable comic book development experience once again.  This was my second contribution as a comic book artist and I plan on having more opportunities if at all possible...whether I work with another writer again, adapt a story for a graphic novel...or write and illustrate one myself. :)

Here are a few reviews for W:S issue #1:
http://www.comicbastards.com/homepage/2012/9/19/review-womanthology-space-1.html
http://www.readaboutcomics.com/2012/09/19/womanthology-space-1/
http://www.primaryignition.com/2012/09/20/first-impressions-womanthology-space-1/

Below is one of the early concept sketches I did based on Sandy’s initial thoughts about the story.  I posted some of the original pencils over on my Facebook page here as well: https://www.facebook.com/TanjaWootenIllustration

Year of the Dragon

In keeping with 2012 being the Year of the Dragon, I created this illustration as one of several dragon-ish projects.  The digital painting is above, with a crop of the original pencil sketch below.

Where Wolf?

"There wolf!" 

Did a quick werewolf concept illustration today that still needs just a bit of fine-tuning before I consider it final.  Below are some progress images as I created the werewolf concept, from initial pencil sketch to almost final color in Photoshop.

Baby Unicorn

A quick sketch yesterday of a baby unicorn which I then colored in Photoshop, inspired after seeing photos last week of various baby goats (kids) and horses (foals and fillies) posted on a couple of Facebook pages that I follow.

It's similar in style to the "pin-up" illustration that I did for the artists' gallery in the soon to be published Deluxe Version of the graphic novel "The Last Unicorn" coming out in May 2012 (per Amazon).

The baby unicorn I've done will be one of several traditional watercolor illustrations I'll be creating over the summer. I'll be launching my new Etsy shop in the Fall with assorted prints and original fantasy artwork available for sale at that time. If there are particular creatures or characters you'd be interested in seeing or buying, let me know! I'll be setting up a commission schedule soon as well. :)

Spring Things

As usual in my self-employed illustrator universe, various projects are in development and in various stages, so here is a bit of what I'm working on lately:

- concept art for custom painting of Disney figurines
- product design concepts for Holiday 2013
- assorted traditional watercolor fantasy illustrations (personal work)
- assorted digital fantasy illustrations
- picture book dummy proposal (author/illustrator)
- artist for an urban Fairy Tale adaptation graphic novel proposal
- writer/artist of my own YA fantasy graphic novel proposal

And, just officially announced -- Womanthology: Space!

Yes, I'm dancing with extreme happiness over that...! :)

Creating Cameos

Last summer I volunteered for what turned out to be artist Renae De Liz's most excellent Womanthology comic book project. By contributing, I hoped to gain some practical experience as a comic book artist (a long-time dream of mine), while at the same time create art for a great cause. It turned out to be so much more than that!

Cameos
One of my creative tasks for the Womanthology: Heroic project was doing cameos of a few of the Kickstarter contributors. My writing partner, Kimberly Komatsu, wrote the script to a wonderful short story called "The Aviator and the Elephant". It had multiple characters which meant I could do more than one cameo.

I ended up doing six.

In order to capture the individual look of each of the contributors, I did a variety of sketches for each subject using the photo(s) they submitted, and then did some more sketches of them in character and in costume in the same poses (or close to) for the story panels. Some of the cameos were in two panels, but most were in only one. Here are some of the preliminary panel thumbnails and sketches I did for the cameos:






After all of that, I did final pencils of each of the cameo panels along with the other panels for each page. Here those are, in no particular order and without text (FYI, there were 4 pages for the story with a total of 35 panels):






And then I scanned the final pencils, patched them together and inked/colored/painted the pages digitally in Photoshop. Here are the final color panels of the cameos (again, without text):






More about my interesting, always fun and challenging experiences, and what I learned about creating comics while working on Womanthology in a later post. :)

Eowyn and Nazgûl sketchings

Over on the ArtOrder blog, a new art challenge:
review the scene (of Eowyn fighting the Nazgul) in the book, and create your own interpretation of that scene.

I managed to pick up a copy of the LoTR trilogy at the nearby used bookstore and did a bit of re-reading of various scenes to tweak my memory last week. And during this week's storms, tornadoes and power outages, I came up with a bunch of possibilities with my little thumbnail sketches, some of which I posted below. I started with various abstract shapes to explore layouts, and then added a bit of gestural figures in the next stage of my thumbnail sketches. I've posted one of the three scenes I'm developing further at the top; I still haven't firmly decided which of my favorites to go final and color.

You can see many more entries, sketches and color versions in progress from other artists from digital to traditional over on the ArtOrder forums, here.

My intention is to do a watercolour version of the final scene I select, with some minor digital enhancements as necessary. The project is due on May 15th...

A Tale of Two Dragons: work in progress

Two dragons, but with two different art briefs: one is for middle grade and the other is for adult. But both illustrations introduce the main characters of the story, and provide a hint of the setting of the story worlds.

I've posted one of the initial rough sketches and layout I was most satisfied with before I started considering colors... The figure above is the image I posted in my Friday Faces page on Facebook as I began detailing more of the figure and costume.
More progress posts later during the week! :)

Whimsical Imp

This week's Friday Faces was a quick color sketch of an imaginary creature. Initial rough was sketched with blue pencil, and the final was colored in Photoshop 7 using one of the basic brushes.

First Day

This one started out as a Friday Faces random sketch, but I really like the narrative that's going on here so I'll be taking this one further over the next few days. Exploring, painting, adding in a background maybe, adding in some extra arms... :)

The Hunter

I seem to be posting everywhere but my sketchblog lately; I'll have to remedy that.

Juggling projects as usual, but I also started up a new weekly sketch practice for myself to work on lighting, speed-painting, and other areas in my illustration artwork that I feel still "needs improvement". I'm calling it "Friday Faces" and plan on posting a new one of those images every week as I have been doing on my Facebook page.

The above image is a concept I did in Photoshop 7 last Friday. A speed-painting practice sketch (for me any detailed illustration under 20 hours is really fast as opposed to product design concepts where I might do 3-10 a day or per week depending on complexity, etc.); took about 6 hours to do including research, sketching and coloring in PS.

Winter in progress

This is a small section of a much larger illustration that I'm drawing at the moment. One of several versions of the rough layout is posted below. Seemed appropriate that this week's Illustration Friday topic was also "Winter" since that is the theme of this illustration as well. I intend to have a majority of the detailed pencil completed by this evening. This will be finished as a watercolor project rather than digital. :)

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all my sketchblog visitors happy holidays and a Merry Christmas! :)

Initial rough sketches for this Santa Claus illustration were developed when I was an in-house illustrator and product designer for a novelty company a few years ago. I've posted some early concept sketches for the scene below. The artwork posted above had been cropped and trimmed especially for use on an ornament (rotating sphere); but the art was also used for other products as well (banners, outdoor holiday display, etc).

Experimenting with a Dragon Rider

Color version of my first ACEO card. I was interested in doing some miniature painting (the cards are 2.5 x 3.5 inches) and creating these as traditional work rather than digital. Used a transparent watercolor wash first over my detailed HB pencil drawing, and then went over that with my new Caran d'Ache colored pencils. Some areas got a bit muddier than I'd anticipated, but for the most part I like it. I have three more to play with in between some other projects I'm working on lately.

Penguins of Leng, version 2

Updated version of my "Penguins of Leng" illustration inspired by Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness", revised after receiving some helpful comments via the ArtOrder forum and from my online critique group of fantasy illustrators. Have some additional work-in-progress posts for other projects I've been working on coming up in the next couple of weeks before Christmas... :)

Promotional Art for Fantasy Illustration

I'll be attending IlluxCon 3 next week -- yay! In preparation, I've updated and finished some artwork I'll be taking with me as promotional pieces for the art show. These two are a couple of illustrations that will definitely be there with me. Wish me luck! :)

Unkind Mermaids and Other Stuff

One of several mermaids I've been drawing in Photoshop 7 with my wacom tablet for yet another fantasy illustration project. Still need to add ornaments to her hair and a few other tweaks and fixes which I'll get to when I go to color.

I'm also working on some "miniature" pencil drawings (they're about 3.5 x2.25 inches each) for a series of fantasy illustrations I want to finish up with watercolors. Should be fun!

A little at a time...

Just a wee bit of progress on one of several dragon themed illustrations I've been working on in between those pesky other projects. :)

I happened to be thinking about this painting (in particular, how I'm going to do the hilly tree side) while I was driving around taking care of errands; and was so focused on that after seeing a vista that would suit the scene perfectly...I almost crashed my car. D'oh! That was not my best moment. Needless to say, I won't be doing that again...!!

Lovecraft Creatures: Penguins of Leng

The above is the final concept art that I did for the latest Art Order challenge.The initial rough sketches and lineart are below. A nice break and something quite different from other projects I'm working on at the moment. :) Here's the quote from H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" that I referenced while I developed these particular penguins:

“Suddenly a bulky white shape loomed up ahead of us, and we flashed on the second torch…This white, waddling thing was fully six feet high, yet we seemed to realize at once that it was not one of those others…We were indeed clutched for an instant by primitive dread almost sharper than the worst of our reasoned fears regarding those others. Then came a flash of anticlimax as the white shape sidled into a lateral archway to our left to join two others of its kind which had summoned it in raucous tones. For it was only a penguin—albeit of a huge, unknown species larger than the greatest of the known king penguins, and monstrous in its combined albinism and virtual eyelessness.”





You can view other artists' interpretations, from student to professional, of various creatures from the stories of Lovecraft on the Art Order forums, here.

More Dragon progress

Back to this particular dragon illustration finally after a brief hiatus to work on another different fantasy project (or two). I'll be refocusing on this one mostly for the next week while I do some major digital painting with it.