The Little Joys of The Past Year

Happy December my wonderful blog readers ~ The air is crisp and cold here in Birmingham and me and my cold nose love it.

We’re closing in to the end of the year and I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’ve written eight of these blog posts so far. Where did the time go? It can be easy for me to fall off of projects but I’m delighted that the experience with writing this blog has been different. I appreciate the space to write out my thoughts, feelings and weird facts (did you know that the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus is the largest known flying animal to have ever existed) and I am thankful for everyone who has reached out and said that you’re enjoying it as well. Woo!

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We’ve almost reached another year’s end. So why do I feel a holiday slump?

Well, November was a month of everything and nothing happening at once for me. I attended the eye-opening British Isles SCBWI annual conference where I sat in workshops that made me want to write more and more and more and more and all the books (a suspense YA thriller workshop in particular). A serious highlight of the month! But before and after, as can happen with big events, I fell into a slump. Maybe it’s the winter darkness, maybe it’s because the year is ending, but the usual holiday glee that I usually feel wasn’t quite there. 

That slump took over a lot of my life, including writing and illustrating. Sometimes writing these blog posts comes naturally, but this month even the theme of this month was up in the air until a few days ago.

Because of that, I worked on this blog post a little differently than I normally would. Usually, I would write the blog post first and then figure out the illustrations but this month I painted the illustrations before anything else. After worrying that I wouldn’t be able to draw anything I ended up sketching out the above mice in a double decker bus pretty quickly. And then I broke out the paints and just went at it. When a whole day of painting went by I realized that I had gotten through my slump and found my joy through creating art again.

So *drum roll please*, I decided I would write about the little joys that I’ve had this year! What art defined me this year? What books could I not put down?? Reminding myself that life is full of slumps AND highlights was a great exercise to get me feeling joyful and more creative again. I often tell people that making art for a living is kind of an emotional rollercoaster. You put a piece of yourself on those pages and that can take it out of you. BUT you also have the power to create those joys in your life that take your emotional rollercoaster to its climax!

Okay, I’ll stop talking like a motivational poster and get right to my list of little joys from 2022:

Handy-dandy-6-point-list-of-joys-and-delights-from-2022:

6 pieces of art that I’ve made that define my year:

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• This was a fun exercise to pick only six images that define my year. This year, I spent a lot of time trying out new styles, using new mediums, writing new stories and just experimenting in general.

5 books I’ve loved reading this year:

• Books are a big part of my life but I don’t always have the time to sit down with a good book and read. Luckily, this year, I was able to read more books than I have since I was a kid and I can feel the positive outcome. Books open up a world to a different part of your brain, don’t they? Maybe that’s my book creator bias talking! Anywho, here are my favorite books from the past year:

• Ready or Not by Tracy Darnton: This was a recent read! I bought this at the British Isles SCBWI conference after attending the author’s workshop. I’m not always a fan of young adult books, but this one was AMAZING. It’s a whole genre that I feel like I’ve overlooked.

• Stig of the Dump by Clive King: I had never heard of this book before my husband mentioned that it was an English classic. We listened to it on a road trip over a period of hours and I fell in love with it. I’d be honored to ever write a book as funny, heartwarming and unique as this.

• The Lion of Mars by Jennifer L. Holm: I’m a Sci-Fi fan, so reading a book about a cat in a Mars colony for kids was an immediate grab for me. I never wanted to put this book down and after I was done I wanted more. Let me know if you have any good recommendations for space themed middle grade books!

• The Spy Who Loved School Dinners by Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham: SO FUNNY! I usually gravitate to funny books so I was completely satisfied reading this early middle grade book. The neon pink cover is also a huge bonus! My inner child ate this wacky, hilarious book right up.

• Hello Hello by Brenden Wenzel:

Can’t wait to read more next year!

4 drawing tools I loved using year:

• Winsor & Newton Henry Collection Ink Pack of 8: I bought the eight pack of these inks when I first moved to the UK. I had never used colored inks before but I had seen them in other illustrators’ tool belts and dreamt. Where have they been all my life?? They have intense, almost neon tones that I enjoy using for painting textures and backgrounds. They’re so great that I’d like to incorporate them into my book work in the future.

• Vintage Calligraphy Pen Nib: Okay, I need to get SOMETHING off my chest. I have NO IDEA how to care for pen nibs. *Exhale* Okay that feels better. When I purchased this vintage Birmingham, UK pen nib I didn’t take the best care of it. I put it to the side and didn’t clean it very well when I first got it. BUT! Recently, I’ve started using it more and I realize that this baby is WONDERFUL. I never felt like I could ink real work until I started seriously using this. Hopefully you’ll see a book out in the next few years that was made with this bad boy.

• M. Graham & Co. Gouache Set: I’ve had this set of gouache for the past couple years now, but I keep coming back to it because it’s so lovely to use. I love that gouache is an in-between for acrylic and watercolor: opaque but still easy to spread around. I used this M. Graham paint for the blog illustrations this month ❤️

• Sticks! I started using sticks as a drawing tool after taking a workshop with Jane Porter about breaking through your creative block. She talked about how using unexpected tools could help you have fun when you sketch. She’s darn right that it’s fun!

3 non-drawing hobbies I’ve loved this year:

• Yoga, reading and sewing. When I made my art “hobby” into a career, I went through that phase of not knowing what to do. Art had always been what I filled my extra time with. So this past year, I made an effort to find other things to do outside of painting and drawing. I haven’t had as much time as I wanted for these hobbies but that’s okay too! Being able to sew without the pressure of needing to monetize my hobby is refreshing. I can also touch my toes now thanks to yoga. It’s all been a win-win!

2 photos I took this year that make me smile:

• It was hard to pick just two! SO many things happened this year that made me smile, but I kept on coming back to these two pictures. It’s just a little moment from my life but the image on the left is from the local pet store where they had “raggits” for sale. You couldn’t make a better title for a picture book if you tried IMO.

• The picture on the right is my cat, Baby, on a walk, in a coat. If you hadn’t noticed already, I’m a real cat fanatic so having to dress my Texas cat in a coat because of the cold English winter melts my heart.

1 thing I’m proud of this year: 

• Having three published books out in the world. It was actually hard to think of this as well. I kept on thinking, “you can’t be proud of your books, that’s your work”. But it’s a goal that I’ve been edging towards for most of my life. I’ve wanted to make a career in a field that I’m passionate about. And I’ve accomplished that this year!

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After writing that out, I’m feeling bubbly, full of energy, and a little hungry!

But truly, it helped remind me that even in a chaotic year full of really big life events, or even just around the chaotic time that are the holidays, I’ve lived another whole year on this planet! And things happened! I think that’s an accomplishment in itself. I enjoyed this exercise so much that I might even make an accordion book to commemorate those joys.

How about making a list yourself? If you do make one, let me know how it turned out.

Happy Holidays to all ya’ll lovely creators! Thanks for tuning in to this blog again and I can’t wait to talk to you more in the new year ❤️

A little something from a wreath making class I took ~

Hugs,
Marissa

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8 Tips for Conquering "Blank Page" Fear

Your pencils are sharpened. Your paper is down. You’re completely ready to start drawing but… nothing… comes… out. Dun dun duuun!

Does your mind ever go blank and you can’t bring yourself to make a mark on that nice clean sheet of paper in front of you? Maybe you can’t think of any “good” ideas? We’ve all been there. So how do you get over that fear of the blank page?

This topic popped into my mind because I recently had an experience with “blank page” fear. A couple months ago, I knew I needed to start sketches for a picture book but something was stopping me. I sat myself down in front of a stack of computer paper and tried to start. But nothing came out. No matter how hard I tried I JUST COULDN’T START DRAWING.

Blank paper anxiety hit me bad and in the moment it felt ridiculous. I knew I needed to draw, I even knew what I needed to draw, but I couldn’t start. My muses disappeared and they left my creative brain in a mess. At least clean up a bit, geez! But I realized that “blank page” fear doesn’t pop up out of nowhere: there was a reason (or in my case, reasons) for why I felt stuck.

After having a heart-to-heart with my very wise significant other, I identified a few reasons for my BPF (aka “Blank Page” Fear): 

• I was afraid to fail. This picture book project is close to my heart. The book is written by two amazing women who care about writing genuine and important books for children. And that scared me; I didn’t want to make something that didn’t live up to their amazing message.

• There were 101 other things to do. I’m an illustrator and a business owner and BOY do I get busy. Not only am I often working on sketches, but I’m usually juggling 2 to 3 to 4 books at once. This is combined with marketing and social media, emails, classes, finances and a myriad of other minor tasks my brain is trying to focus on. The overwhelming feeling of having too many things on my plate can be debilitating.

• I was tired. Sometimes, good ideas don’t flow if my brain is fried! A few months ago I creatively burnt out, but after some rest, a slower work schedule, and better planning, I was able to pull myself out. But diving headfirst into a new book felt like I’d be sinking into burn-out again.

Identifying why I was scared helped me work through the fear. And working through that fear lead to something amazing: finished sketches for a new picture book!

Figuring out what’s causing “blank page” fear is part of the process of conquering it, but if you’re still feeling unsure about drawing that first stroke in your sketchbook, here are some tips I use to overcome “blank page” fear: 

1. Write a list. 

I always keep my notebook close by to write down ideas. Ideas tend to come to me when I’m in the middle of doing something else; ideas like: “What if slugs took over the world?” or “What would a birthday party look like if only chickens were invited?” Instead of letting those ideas waft away into the universe, I take out my handy dandy notebook and write them down. This allows me to go back into that list at a later point and choose one of previous ideas to draw out when “blank page” fear strikes.

If you need to draw something on a specific subject, list out all of the aspects of that subject that interest you. I’ve found that the more you list the better! Skip a five point list and go write down a HUNDRED interests. I guarantee you’ll be excited to draw one of those things by the time you finish your list.

2. Set a timer.

Confession time: I’m a timer fanatic. Doing the dishes? I set a timer. Painting collage papers? I set a timer. Using the bathroom? You get the picture…

Give yourself fifteen minutes, an hour or two. See what you can draw within that time! When your time is up, acknowledge that you sat down, tried your best, and move forward with your next task.

Having a time to work on something also alleviates that “I have 101 other things to do” feeling and I’ve found that creating artwork in an allotted amount of time allows me to draw faster and looser than without the timer.

3. Give yourself a reward.

A good way to push myself to start a project is to offer a reward after I’m done. I’m more likely to work on a task that I might not want to do if I say, “When I draw 5 different versions of this book cover, I can play 30 minutes of video games”. Or “When I finish initial thumbnails for my next book, I can have a cookie and coffee after dinner”.

Choose whatever motivates you! I recommend giving yourself a reward that mirrors the size of your task as well. You don’t want to promise yourself a 4-week tropical vacation for finishing a few sketches because it’ll feel meaningless when you finish that REALLY big project. But you might reward yourself doing something you enjoy for an hour; for example, I’m going to reward myself by carving a pumpkin if I finish this blog post today. A few hours of blog writing = one hour of pumpkin carving!

4. Create drawing exercises. 

Sometimes my brain goes BLANK. During those times, a lighthouse could shine its light in my brain and there’d be nothing but fog and seaweed. And maybe cat photos. But that’s it.

Having go-to drawing exercises takes the indecision out of my “blank page” fear. Instead of sitting there, staring at your blank page and thinking “what should I create”, you already know! Anything that can help you go into a “drawing autopilot” is a good tool to have in your artist belt.

And guess what? You don’t have to think of your own drawing exercises! Here are some already existing exercises and challenges you can take advantage of:

• Transmundane Tuesdays: a weekly drawing exercise run by illustrator, Carson Ellis.

• Color Collective: A weekly challenge where you make work based on a single colour announced via twitter.

• SCBWI’s Artober: an Inktober adjacent list of themes that you can use any time of the year.

• Illustrating Children’s Books by Martin Ursell: a how-to book that is filled with kidlit-specific drawing exercises.

• Making Comics by Lynda Barry: a mind-bending book filled with comic-specific drawing exercises.

5. Don’t be precious. Make trash art.

Perfectionism can be a creativity killer. My mantra lately is “you can’t make something perfect if you don’t make anything at all.”

So if I’m having a hard time getting something on the paper, I tell myself that I’m going to make X number of UGLY illustrations first. When the pressure of being perfect is taken off the table I find that I can create fun, imaginative work. Don’t get me wrong: I make ugly work too, but that’s part of the conquering process.

Give yourself the space to create something DISGUSTING.

6. Try using new materials. 

If you’re making something for a client, you’ll need to make a certain illustration, in a certain style, with certain colors most likely. You have to be specific about what you’re drawing, but sometimes I find those limitations daunting.

Try making something using materials you wouldn’t normally use first. My go-to is creating little collages with textured paper (like for the illustrations in this blog post!). Or try sculpting something. Heck, maybe even get wood-working tools out! Using different parts of your brain can open up creative channels that you wouldn’t normally have access to. After those channels are open, it’ll be easier to start working on that blank page.

My messy desk after one of my collage sessions.

7. Keep yourself accountable. 

Nothing is more helpful to me than keeping myself accountable. When a deadline is looming, it can be stressful but also can kick me into gear and get me to start drawing.

Give yourself a personal deadline and mark it on your calendar. In red!

If personal deadlines don’t work for you (like for me…) tell a friend, family member, or whoever you trust, that you need to start and finish an illustration by a certain day. Their external expectation will encourage you to overcome that “blank page” fear because you can’t show someone your work if you never start it.

8. Take a break! 

If none of the above worked, take a break. We all can get to a point where we’re overworked and tired, and our brains just need to unwind. Do something you enjoy for 30 minutes and see if you feel charged and ready to tackle that blank page afterwards. If you have the time, sleep on it and try again refreshed and awake the next day.

I hope these tips help you get over any “blank page” fear you might be feeling. Remember: it’s not something that you just need to get over once. It’s an ongoing challenge to be beaten over and over again. But when you have the right tools, “blank page” fear becomes a piece of cake to conquer!

Don’t be afraid of drawing that next thing, because whether or not it’s good, you created something out of a pile of raw materials. That’s practically magic, my friend.

Happy Autumn to all of you Northern-Hemisphere-artists out there, and happy Spring to all you Southern Hemispher-ians as well. Keep creating. I know you’ll make something great ❤️

Hugs,
Marissa

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Making the Book: Esme's Birthday Conga Line

Back in March of this year, I wrote in my newsletter that I would share how I created the illustrations for the first (and only) chapter book I’ve worked on: Esme’s Birthday Conga Line. I can FINALLY say that it’s here!

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It’s the first time I’ve shared my book making process and I’ve had some nervous flutters about it. My sketches aren’t always the cleanest and my process can be messy, but this blog is all about sharing a more authentic me outside of social media. And what better way to do that than sharing both the good and the bad?? Even if that’s a little nerve-racking…

ESME’S BIRTHDAY CONGA LINE, written by Lourdes Heuer (check out her other great work here!) and published by Tundra Books. 

Esme lives with her grandparents on the uppermost floor of the topmost best building. It’s her birthday. Mimi and Pipo gave her a beautiful guitar. But they didn’t plan a birthday party.

Esme thinks this is the way with grandparents. They don’t know about parties or piñatas or birthday cake. No problem! Esme is great at problem solving.

With the help of her cat, El Toro, and a LOT of help from her neighbors in the topmost best building, the irrepressible Esme gets the birthday party of her dreams.

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I first learned about Esme through my agent, who approached me with the story right after I signed on with her. When I read the manuscript, I was immediately entranced. A funny chapter book about a confident girl and her cat planning a birthday?? It’s like the author, Lourdes, knew EXACTLY what I was like as a kid and knew exactly what I would love to draw as an adult. I couldn’t wait to start sketching out this book!

But where did I actually start?

Research

This is always the hard part with books. Ideas are swirling around in your head, but you need to start making decisions about style, color, designs. It can be a little daunting knowing that you’re creating a whole WORLD for your story.

I started by reading the manuscript over and over again until I got a sense of what all the characters were like. At this point, I can usually see some form of the story drawn out in my head. After that, I began to research. My go-to research tool is a handy-dandy Pinterest board so I pinned scores of images of hispanic culture, senior citizens, apartment buildings, cityscapes, piñatas, cats, and matadors to an Esme specific board. Research is a pretty fun part of the process for me, especially when I can go down a few rabbit holes. And with experience, I’ve found that the more research you do up front, the faster the rest of the process becomes.

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Here you can see pins for fabric used by Esme’s seamstress neighbor. I find that if you work off of real objects and locations for props and backgrounds, the more believable they end up looking in your final illustrations.

After that, I created a mood-board (see image below) that I sent to our editor and art director. This one was especially simple, but having a visual representation of what you want the book to feel like can help the editor and art director understand your overall vision. It’s a quick thing to create and it’s great to look back at when you’re working on the book to make sure you’re sticking to the proposed mood too.

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Character Designs

Oh the characters! Outfits, hairstyles, TURNAROUNDS. Creating characters is my favorite part of the process! When I first envisioned Esme, I saw her being a small but spunky Latina girl. While Lourdes wrote SO MUCH of Esme’s personality into the manuscript, she never really specified what Esme looked like or what her heritage was. Other than Esme having glasses and knowing that her favorite color was green, everything else was up to me. Because I’m from Mexican heritage, I wanted to mirror that part of me with Esme. A lot of creating characters, in my experience, is finding that aspect of yourself that you can give to the characters to flesh them out.

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Different versions of Esme and her cat, El Toro (who ended up looking a lot like my cat…).

I think drawing from your own experiences and personality adds a fullness to the character that would be hard to achieve otherwise.

With Esme, I mirrored my heritage, my somewhat bushy eyebrows, and the frizzy hair I had as a kid. But don’t be fooled: I didn’t draw her perfectly the first time. Esme went through MANY design iterations. At one point she had big fluffy pigtails, she donned a tutu at another, I even gave her a pug nose which I eventually axed in the end.

This book ended up being a character development BEAST. There are fourteen characters in total and I wanted to make sure that each character matched Esme’s style but was also completely distinctive in their own way. Lourdes had created characters with such unique personalities anyway so it wasn’t too difficult to make each character look distinct and interesting in the sketches. Drawing out scenes with fourteen characters WAS a little time consuming though!

A couple of my favorite characters are El Toro, who originally had a luchador mask design on his face (check out the image above), the Garcia Twins who are 100% modeled after the twins from The Shining and the Mora sisters, who had the coolest apartment in the world to draw.

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After creating a character sheet, I sent the finalized sketches of Esme, El Toro and the rest of the gang to our editor who shared them with the art director and Lourdes. I received some feedback and with a few tweaks we decided on the dot eye version of Esme with a ponytail. Surprisingly, Lourdes asked if we could change Esme’s outfit to a pair of pink overalls, which I LOVED. Lourdes must be a mind reader, because I had initially thought of putting Esme in a pair of overalls, but, at the last minute, decided that might be a little too average looking. Stick with your gut, friends!

Thumbnails and Sketches

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Esme was especially fun to draw sketches for because the manuscript was so funny but roomy enough that I felt like I could add in my humor to the story as well.

I started the sketches when the AD, John, sent over page layouts that included the text. These outlined, on each page, where I needed to place my illustrations in coordination with the text. I printed the page layouts at about 20% of their normal size out onto paper and started drawing VERY sketchy initial thumbnails with pencil. I’m talking shapes and scribbles, people. Nothing fancy!

I printed the layouts small because I think thumbnails are just that: thumb size. Starting out teeny tiny is great because I can focus on composition, bigger shapes, and flow lines instead of worrying about the smaller details. This definitely doesn’t always happen but it’s incredible looking back on the sketches and seeing how closely the finals actually mirrored the thumbnails.

After that initial pass at the thumbnails, I cleaned them up to a state where they were readable enough to send to the editor. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m a pretty messy sketcher, so I have to go through several passes to get my sketches at a stage where objects and characters actually look IDENTIFIABLE.

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I mean, look at this thing! What is it? Some sort of spider? Is that cat flying in the air in the background??

After sketches were sent to the editor, I was sent feedback about potential revisions. There were a couple places where the sketches needed to be revised (usually in spots where I made the scene a little TOO ridiculous, like in the sketch below) but most images stayed as is from the original thumbnails. Little to no revisions don’t always happen but let me tell you, when it does it FEELS GREAT!

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Can we get a “bwahaha” in here??

Color Palette

Color is not something that comes naturally to me, so choosing a color palette for Esme was a challenge. I created a few initial color studies but it felt like nothing was gelling until I received an email from the editor and Lourdes.

“Could we incorporate a Cuban color palette into the illustrations?”

Uh, OF COURSE WE COULD. I immediately started looking at Cuban buildings and fashion and saw that Cuba is wonderfully pastel. Voila! Lightbulb moment! Eureka! My issues with the color palette were solved. When I started using pastel pinks, greens, blues and yellows, everything made sense. This is a textbook example of how collaboration can lead to MAGIC. And if you’re illustrating books, there’s a good chance you’re most likely a fan of working with other people anyway.

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Finals

FINALS. Oh, finals. Unlike character designs, finals are NOT my favorite part of the process. You might call this the bad that I was talking about earlier… Finishing art is a long and physically demanding task for me, especially because my process includes drawing on a lot of layers and drawing in a lot of tiny details. This is when I put my head down, put on a good podcast or audio book and just draw, pretty robotically, for 8 to 12 (sometimes 16…) hours a day.

Some pages were harder to finish than others and, at times, I would find myself starting to doubt whether the illustrations looked good or not. But the wonderful thing about Esme and El Toro was that I was always entertained. Every time I was in a rush to finish a page, a witty joke that Lourdes wrote would make me laugh and brighten my day.

In the end it took me about two months to finish the forty spreads, and when I finished, I was really proud of what I had created.

I finished the illustrations for Esme in Procreate, using watercolor brushes for the base colors and a chalk brush for details, with some handmade textures sprinkled in at the end. The nice thing was that I had already done work figuring out the colors for each page, so that made the finals just that much easier to work through. Some books have stricter time limitations so I’m not always able to create color studies, but when I do, it makes the whole process that much easier! It’s something I now strive to do for every book.

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Sketches to finals for one funky conga line illustration.

From there, I received proofs in the mail and looked them over. The proofs at first looked pretty desaturated partially because the printer printed them out that way and partially because I wasn’t great at not using CMYK friendly colors at that time. I’ve learned since then! After some lovely tweaking by the art director, I was sent another round of proofs that looked PERFECT. Praise all the art directors out there! Unfortunately, I had to leave all my proofs behind when I moved overseas so I don’t have any pictures of them to show in this post.

(Just imagine me in a lofty, Victorian library surrounded by large sheets of glossy paper filled with swirling images of piñatas, cats, and elevator fires, thoughtfully stroking my chin and smoking a pipe while looking at the proofs. That’s not what it was like AT ALL but that sounds pretty cool, right?)

Once the proofs were approved I had the wonderful pleasure of receiving my illustrator copies of Esme’s Birthday Conga Line in the mail! WOOOO!! There’s nothing more exciting than holding the real-life book that you helped create.

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Any insecurities I may have about my illustrations all go away when I flip through pages of the final book. There’s something mesmerizing about seeing the art-directed-text on the page with your illustrations. You spend so much time working on the art that it’s easy to forget see how the text is going to coordinate with your illustrations on the finished pages. It’s magic when you see everything together! One of the things that makes children’s books so great in my opinion.

And that’s it!

An in-depth overview of how I created the illustrations for one of my favorite books of all time, Esme’s Birthday Conga Line, written by Lourdes Heuer and published by Tundra Books. I hope this blog post helped reveal any mystery about illustrating books as well; it’s a process that differs from artist to artist and it can take a long time, but it’s not impossible and if you’re trying to make a book now, you can do it! Even if the process gets a little messy.

Esme’s Birthday Conga Line is out now! If you liked what you saw in this blog post, you can grab the book at your local independent bookstore, at your local library, or through Amazon.

Thanks for sticking around, hope you have a very spooky Halloween. Can’t wait to talk to you more next month ❤️

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Hugs,
Marissa (and Esme!)

Sketchbook Tour #1

I thought I’d make this month’s blog post a little different and give ya’ll a sneak peek into one of my sketchbooks for this blog’s first iteration of a sketchbook tour!

Sketchbook Tour: Why am I doing this?

I’ve always kept my sketchbooks very close to my heart; I rarely show them off and I recently haven’t been sharing my sketchy drawings on social media at all. It made me think: do I treat my rough, scribbly, scrobbly sketches TOO preciously? Am I scared of what people will think of my rough work?

When I was brainstorming ideas for blog posts, I made the decision to put myself out there and do something that felt a little strange: dedicating a whole series to sharing the inner pages of my sketchbooks. Let’s get vulnerable!

*a few random sketches that fell out of my head.

I’ll be outlining what kind of sketchbook I worked in, what materials I used, what intention I had for the sketchbook and what I learned from actually finishing the sketchbook! (Which, trust me, I have A LOT of unfinished sketchbooks…)

I’m also planning on this post to be the tiniest kick in the butt for me to draw in my sketchbooks more! Blank page anxiety is a real thing, ya’ll. 

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Sketchbook #1

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• What kind of sketchbook is this? Oh nelly, I chose this book for the first sketchbook tour because it’s my favorite! I hand sewed this one with smooth white Bristol paper and regular sewing thread.

  I am not a seasoned book maker but my friend Meghan showed me a sketchbook she made herself and I fell in LOVE with it! She used high quality paper for it and it just felt great to hold in my hands. Ya’ll, there was some real sketchbook jealousy happening. So I just had to make own!

  I think everyone has a preference about their sketchbook size: my preference is smaller. I made this book so that it was 5x7 inches, which ended up being perfect. I know if I have smaller sized pages, I’m more likely to actually fill the page. If I only ever worked in 5x7 sketchbooks, I would be very happy! What’s your preference?

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P.S. If you’re looking into making your own sketchbook, I recommend watching Sea Lemon’s tutorial on Kettle stitching: It’s what I used to create this sketchbook and few more after this one. It’s great for beginners!

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This sketchbook was actually my first venture into hand stitching and woah, I got SO hooked to it!

If I could make ALL of my sketchbooks I definitely would. While I loved the process, my hand stitching wasn’t the best so I hid my stitching by pasting some rough pink paper I made during my papermaking phase onto the covers and spine of the book. I’m pretty happy with the result and every time I look at my sketchbook I’m reminded that I saved some paper from being thrown in the trash. Definitely a win-win!

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I LOVE this sketchbook, but it was also a lot of work. Doing this is certainly a labor of love!

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• What kind of materials did I use in this sketchbook? Lots of watercolor, brush pens, dip ink pens, colored pencils, paper collage and oh so more. I can’t remember everything but there was lots of fun stuff to work with!

  I felt open to using ALL the materials for this sketchbook and I’m really happy with the result. I wasn’t afraid to just try stuff out: I slapped down watercolor, I gouach-ed the heck out of pages and I used my fancy dip pen nibs A LOT. It was fun and really encouraging to use mediums that I may normally be a little hesitant to try out. I found out that I really want to work with dip pens more and I’m even trying to incorporate it in my professional work now.

  In fact, I made the dividers for this blog using that same dip pen!

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• What was my intention for this sketchbook? The intention of this sketchbook was to draw as much as possible! When I made this sketchbook, I told myself that I would draw something substantial in it at least once a week. I may have even said once a day?? The main goal was to draw and paint something in it as often as possible.

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Before I even started drawing in this book, I also told myself that I would FILL the pages with art. And that meant good or bad art! Whatever came, as long as the pages were filled top to bottom.

Setting that intention allowed me to focus on why I was drawing instead of what I was drawing. I wasn’t scared about drawing or making something bad or worried about being too scribbly because I knew what my overall goal for the book was before I even started.

For some people, having a sketchbook where you don’t think about what you’re going to make ahead of time can be a great thing, but I thrive with structure.

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I’ll definitely be thinking of my intention for my other sketchbooks before I start working on them! If you’re like me and you crave structure, set an intention for your sketchbook and share it with me! I’d love to hear what you come up with.

And know this: not all of my sketchbooks are as polished as this one; I often include waaaaay more writing and chicken-scratch-esque sketches in my sketchbooks. You’ll hopefully get to see all that in the next sketchbook tour :)

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• What did I learn from finishing this sketchbook? You can fill up a sketchbook REALLY quickly when you set your mind to it. I also learned that playing around with full colored sketches is really fun. When I was younger, my sketchbooks were usually only in black and white because I felt like color was reserved for finished pieces only.

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I also learned that I had A LOT OF FUN trying stuff out in this book and I can’t wait to finish another one.

I’m not saying everyone should share everything they make in their sketchbook. An artist’s sketchbook can be a wonderfully personal thing but I love it when I can see into the working mind of other artists. This is my way to give my working mind to the children’s book community while also getting over my fear of sharing!

Thanks friends! Until next time (with another finished sketchbook) ❤️

Hugs,
Marissa

*a super sketchy sketch that I love!

Incorporating Texture into Digital Illustrations in Procreate

February: the month of love, winter storms, and another blog post about handmade textures. 

Can you believe it’s already February? A lot is happening this month: I just got married (whoop!), the other half and I are applying for visa status from the UK for moi, we’re getting our cats, Baby and Chica, ready for a transatlantic voyage, and I have a few books in the works. I never thought I would try to pack so much into 28 days.

That being said, this blog has become a sort of a haven for me. A place to slow down and focus on one thing for a little while. I’m so happy to take a breath and just think about this month’s theme: a texture companion blog post to last month’s post, where I went over how to create your own handmade textures. 

Creating your own handmade textures is all good and dandy, but what do you do with those textures once you have them?? 

The idea behind creating my last two blog posts actually originated because I wanted to create supplemental resources for my almost-released Domestika course, Creating a Children’s Illustration Portfolio.

Domestika is an online learning platform that specializes in creative courses about pretty much anything. While making my class about creating a children’s book portfolio, I found out that there is A LOT that goes into making a children’s illustration class curriculum! With the help of my fairy godmother of a producer, Gina, I filled in pages and pages of curriculum detailing exactly what we were going to talk about in each lesson. In the end, we had to cut a LOT of content because we couldn’t fit everything into a 3-hour course. 

If you’ve ever taken a Domestika class (which you totally should; I may be biased but I LOVE them) they’re only a few hours long at most. My producer encouraged me to not throw away all that extra content from the curriculum, but instead create “supplemental resources” that students could view outside the class, such as pdf tutorials and videos. 

SO…this blog post IS one of the supplement resources!

Handmade textures give my illustrations a tangible and warm quality that draws in a lot of my clients and gets me enough work to be a full-time children’s book illustrator. Along with making this blog as a supplement to my Domestika course, I’m creating these art process posts to help you understand how you can incorporate your handmade, unique textures into your illustrations.

3 Ways I Incorporate Texture into my Digital Illustration

1. Using texture as a collage. I was talking to a friend and critique partner recently, and I showed him how I use a certain watercolor brush in Procreate. I made a color layer and then cut out the shape I wanted with a lasso tool. He was surprised when he saw that I don’t use the watercolor brush in Procreate like I would using traditional watercolor paints. Yeehaw! At that point I realized I tend to use color and texture like collage - I lay it down and then cut it out digitally. It’s SO NICE using texture like this because it's an easy and fast way to get base colors down for painting. In this case, it worked out perfectly because the texture I used had a mottled look, much like an elephant hide. And let’s be honest; I don’t know if I could have achieved that look with just Procreate brushes!
   
   

2. Using texture as an overlay. While I was making the textures, I kept in mind that I would use them as overlay layers, specifically the rough pastel textures that I created, on different parts of the elephant and its surroundings. I knew that I wanted to use those rough, shadowy textures around the elephant's ears, hands and feet. In real life, animals, and people aren’t all one color! If you look at a picture of an elephant, you’ll notice that its feet and ears are a different tone from its face and stomach, and the end of its trunk is a different tone from the beginning of the trunk. Adding in those little textures, like the darker pastels, changes the tone and creates a gradient around the extremities that adds form to your character and illustration. Try using this method in one of your illustrations and let me know how it works for you. :)
   
   

3. Using texture as accents. This is a lot like #2 because you’ll most likely be overlaying these accents as well, EXCEPT these accents aren’t super obvious. They are the teeny tiny bits that make your piece perfect. These last little accents (like the brush textures I used to create the blushed cheeks of the elephant) are the last sprinkle on top of the cherry on top of your illustration cake. If it feels like your piece isn’t quite there, try adding an accent texture (something small!) to see if that’s just what you needed to make it perfect. I also love adding a couple of ink splatters right when I’m finishing up an illustration; the little accent makes ALL the difference at the end and I’m often too scared to try adding those in my traditionally painted pieces. I usually end up getting paint everywhere!

While I could just write about it, I thought it would be beneficial to actually show you how I incorporate texture into my illustrations using Procreate. Sooooo *tiny drum roll* here’s a time-lapse of me using my handmade textures to make a digital illustration!

I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty technical aspects of how I illustrate in Procreate but let me know if you’d like to learn about that and I’ll share in a separate blog post!

*Quick Tip! When I don’t need super high resolution versions of my textures, I’ll just take a picture of them in nice quality light with my iPad and import those photos into Procreate. 

That’s about it! However you end up using your handmade textures, remember, enjoy the process! 

You do you: try different ways of incorporating that warm, fuzzy, handmade feeling into your illustrations and share your illustrations with me through email or instagram: @marissaarts. I’d love to see what you make!

Goodbye for now, mark-makers! See you next month ❤️

One of my fav wedding photos! Photography by @picnikkphotos

Hugs,
Marissa

How to: Handmade Textures

Handmade textures, oh golly, handmade textures! I always look forward to the day/week/month when I get to focus on making textures. It’s one of my favorite parts of the illustration process and the time when I know I can break out acrylics, gouaches, colored pencils, sponges, random items, fabrics, and fun mark-making tools. Making textures sends a fresh rush of adrenaline up my creative spine!

@marissaarts - handmade + procreate illustration

Why create handmade textures?

I get asked a lot whether I create my illustrations traditionally or digitally. Surprisingly (to me at least!), a lot of people think I paint in actual watercolor. So much so that it was even mentioned in a review of AMBITIOUS GIRL:

“The soft watercolor illustrations amplify the book’s underlying messages of love and hope, filling the backgrounds with a multiracial cast of women diverse in age, sexuality, ethnicity, and ability.” - Kirkus. 

But guess what — I haven’t used watercolor for aannnyy of my book illustrations so far. I even have a little secret… I don’t even like using watercolor! (Don’t tell anyone I said that, okay??) Honestly, I wish I had the skills to create a book entirely using traditional mediums (which is definitely a goal one day!), but it’s not something I want to tackle at the moment.

That being said, the way that I’m able to accomplish a look that mimics traditional mediums is by using the seriously amazing Maxpack Procreate brushes and by importing handmade textures into Procreate. I’ve found that the traditional textures I create add that teeny, tiny extra touch which knocks the piece onto another level. In fact, sometimes I’m surprised by what the texture does to the illustration. That handmade quality of the texture can affect my base illustration in a way that I don’t initially expect, much like the happy mistakes that you tend to get when you paint traditionally. 

Those happy accidents (like grabbing the wrong color, accidental ink spills, smudges, etc.) tend to add some whimsy to the digital illustration process where whimsy tends to be in high demand, especially because every mistake is only two taps away from being undone.

Recent sketch @marissaarts

A recent example of unexpected whimsy: I was free-sketching in Procreate one morning and made the illustration above. I finished up the linework and color, but the piece still seemed a little… bland. Because this was just a sketch, I pulled out a random “texture” from my photo folder and plopped it in Procreate as an overlay layer.

Holy HECK! Not only did it add that teeny, tiny something special I was looking for, but it added something I wasn’t expecting: it added a light source to my doodle!

*The original “texture” photo and my sketch pre-texture. It’s not bad, but it didn’t have that little thing that made it great!

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I have a hard time incorporating light sources in the first place, so this was a good reminder that it’s an element that I shouldn’t ignore in my future illustrations. That was something that I never would’ve added with a brush; my mind wasn’t going in that direction and doesn’t go in that direction naturally. So instead of toiling with the piece only using my digital tools, the texture did a lot of that work for me!

So… you’ve heard why I love making handmade textures; now try it yourself.

Tools and Materials:

• Mark-making tools. Don’t limit yourself with these! Almost anything can become a mark-making tool and can surprise you in how it moves around the paint/ink/medium you’re using.  You can use paint brushes, dried-out paint brushes, twigs, old toothbrushes, rags, paper towels, cut-up potatoes, leaves (I even used Oreos one time as a stamp!). Go wild!

• Paint. Same here, be creative! Acrylics, gouache, watercolor, veggie dye you’ve created yourself. The sky's the limit! My favorite paints at the moment are Daniel Smith Watercolors and M.Graham & Co. Gouaches.

• Ink. You can use a variety of inks, from india ink to fountain pen ink. Just remember that some are water-soluble and others are not. Water-soluble means that the ink will bleed and move around if you paint with watercolor or watered-down gouache on top of it. My favorite ink to use at the moment is Dr. Ph Martin’s Black Star Waterproof India Ink. It’s waterproof and the color is a deep, dark, soul-crushing black which I LOVE.

• Dry media. Colored pencils, pastels, and crayons and lots more. Some of my favorites at the moment are Derwent Inktense Ink Pencils and Caran d’Ache Neopastels.  

• Paper! Or really any material you can paint on. I’m gonna keep saying this over and over, but be as creative as you want to be with the materials on this list. What I like to work with at the moment are smooth bristol paper, tissue paper and brown craft paper (like the kind included in packages; yay for recycling!) 

• Scanner, camera, Ipad, or anything that you can use to take a photo of your handmade texture. If you’re planning on using these textures in a handmade collage or illustration, feel free to disregard this step. BUT ALSO, if you can, getting high quality scans of your textures to keep on your computer is a great idea. When I’m on a tight deadline and I’m just looking for some of that extra pizzazz for an illustration, I’ll pull a texture that I’ve already created from my texture folder. It’s great when you don’t have the time to make something brand new for a project!

Now it’s time for the fun part…

Make your mark! Honestly, there’s no wrong way to create your textures. I recommend scheduling an hour or two at a time to go crazy because I find it can take a while to get into that crazy-mark-making-zone. If you’re making textures with a specific illustration in mind, you might want to stay a little more structured, but I find that I make my best work when I get into those truly open-ended play times with my art. That means dipping a potato in paint and then smooshing it into crumpled paper. Or finger painting with cheap paints from the dollar store. Or ripping up paper just to collage it all back together again.

In fact! Take a glimpse at how I made some textures with a specific illustration in mind:

(That scraggly twig thing in the video is a witches’ broom pen I got as a gift from a friend. It’s become one of my favorite mark-making tools!)

Honestly, isn’t that child-like playing-around the best part of being an artist? Magic happens when you let your mind explore!

So get messy, get dirty, go roll in some dirt and paint with your muddy clothes. I hope you make lots of happy mistakes along the way ❤️

Hugs,
Marissa


If you’ve made those handmade textures but you’re unsure about how you can incorporate them into your illustrations, keep an eye out for my next blog post where I share how I create an illustration with the textures I made in the video above!