Illustration Friday topic: Sticky

In a continued effort to get some children's magazine work, I've create another sample spread for Babybug. That's right, I'm going to keep sending them illustrations/manuscripts until they notice me! Hopefully they haven't already noticed me but weren't interested...

It can be strange being an illustrator sometimes, sitting at home wondering what the responses were to your numerous missives. Publishing staff could be looking at samples and liking them, perhaps filing them away until the right project comes along. Or the rejected samples could be sitting somewhere in a big box on their way to recycling! It's a bit like buying a lottery ticket, nothing might happen at all, but you never know when something will get to the right person and lead to a project.

On the upside, I have sent samples and had publishing staff take the time to email and say they liked them. I even had an editor say one of the staff was going to frame one of my postcards and use it to decorate her house. And best of all, I've sent a package that did sit in a file somewhere but led to a book a year later. So even though the online portfolios generally lead to more work, I still keep mailing out packages because you never know.

For this illustration I used the Illustration Friday topic (Sticky) as a starting point, and immediately thought of sticky foods - jam, peanut butter, honey. And who loves those more than a young bear? This was my sketch: Generally I like how the final artwork came out, but although my scanner is quite good, in this case it didn't do such a great job. For some reason dark pink doesn't come out well with my scanner. And overall the colours are a lot richer in the original although I did try to adjust them in Photoshop. Oh well! My little bear did come out nice and fat, and I like the decorations on the chair and the scalloped placemat. Here's a detail:As always you can click on the image to see it larger. Thank you for visiting!