Hello little ones
Hope you've all been well and happy and enjoying the lovely spring. I have!
Although in between enjoying life and spring I've been torturing myself with doubt and acrylic paints. Hence my anguished cry for help. I'm really hoping you will kindly respond with advice and critique and help me make a god damn decision. Ok, here's the thing. I've mentioned before that I wanted to make a children's picture book featuring baby sheepies. I've been drawing them for years but they were never proper illustrations, more like doodles and sketches but I thought, how hard can making illustrations be? Turned out, not easy at all, mes amis, not easy at all. If you saw my drawing "JonJo and his butterfly", that's it, my very first attempt in illustrating, and whilst I don't think it's totally crap, I'm not very happy with it. Somebody suggested I try different mediums and seeing that watercolours and acrylics seem to be favourite mediums in children's books business, I thought I'd give them a try. How hard can it be? Oh. Dear. God. I abandoned watercolours pretty quickly, they were just so frustrating, I wanted to cry. Acrylics were a tad better but still very scary and unpredictable. I'm not defeated though and determined to master this horrid medium. Anyways, I decided to make two illustrations - same scene but one made with acrylics and one with my beloved colour pencils, to see what looks better. Here they are.
Now, imagine the one made with acrylics is not sloppy (I will get better, I promise) Looking at the pictures, I still can't decide what I prefer - I like vibrancy of acrylics but colour pencils are just too comforting and allow more details and precision. Please let me know your honest opinion (still imagining painting is not sloppy). Also if anybody has any illustrating experience, I would very much appreciate some tips and advice. Ooh and one last thing - I've been thinking about trying special acrylics paper which looks like sheets of canvas. Would anybody recommend using it for illustrations? I'm currently using thick watercolour paper.
I apologize for such a long journal, hope I you are not bored to tears.
Looking forward to your comments!
Many thanks in advance
Irene