Tutorial Art Design: jen betton

Portfolio: The Importance of the Series

A couple of weeks ago, SCBWI Insight included a bunch of portfolio tips from the KidLitArtists, and a number of them mentioned including sequences of related images in your portfolio. When developing a portfolio for the children’s book market, you want to demonstrate your ability to tell a story, and a series of images is a key way to do this.

Pick a picture book, and then select 3 of the images from it – they will all look related. They will have a similar feel, palette, and usually show the same characters, just in different situations. Putting a similar set of images in your own portfolio shows art directors that you can maintain consistency with your characters and that you can develop a narrative. Those are both very important skills in picture book illustration. It can be good to have not just one, but several series of images in your portfolio. (When Juana Martinez-Neal won the portfolio showcase in SCBWI LA 2012, her portfolio was a set of 4 different series of images, with one stand-alone image at the end. You can see it here.)

What kind of illustrations you include in your series is up to you, but they should all vary from one another. You want each individual image to show the widest range of your abilities. If you have two in a series that are very similar to each other, it’s just redundant. I’ve done this myself. Here is an example of two images that go together which are essentially the same. Although the composition and color palette are different, the perspective and scale are the same, and the actions and emotions of the mice aren’t significantly different either.

Redundant images in a series © Jen Betton 2016

Here is a series of images I have in my portfolio that I think is successful: There is an environment shot, establishing where the characters are; a closeup, highlighting the relationship of the characters; and an action shot. Each one is different in composition, scale, pose, and perspective.

Varied images in a series © Jen Betton 2016

In the end, it is all about telling a story, in the most interesting way you can.

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Jen Betton writes and illustrates for children.

You can find her work at www.jenbetton.com

@jenbetton on Twitter

www.facebook.com/jenbettonillustration on Facebook

She is currently illustrating TWILIGHT CHANT, by Holly Thompson,

which will be published by Clarion in 2018.

Post-SCBWI Conference: What next?

I usually come back from a conference both jazzed and exhausted. After the flurry of preparing for the conference, and the excitement of the event itself, I'm home. I have all sorts of ideas swirling around, and all these notes and names... what to do next? Here are some things I usually do in the weeks following a conference:

Photo by Andy Musser

Following up: Connect with other Kidlit artists or authors, and maybe some industry folks as well.

Pull out all the postcards you collected and find folks on social media. Follow them. Do the same with the faculty bio page – but use common sense. People who don't personally know you are more likely to welcome a connection on public forums like Twitter or Instagram, rather than private facebook pages.

Update your mailing list with industry folks you may have seen or met at the conference. If you write, and have a story ready for submission, make a special note of anyone who said you could query them in the following weeks, and put the deadline on your calendar (assuming you want to query them).

Send a postcard mailing to your updated list (if you haven't done one just prior to the conference).

Send a thank you note to anyone who critiqued you. In addition to being a nice thing to do, it is another opportunity for that person to see a piece of your art.

Absorbing information: keep the momentum!

File/write up/scan your notes. Look them over and refresh your memory of what was most helpful or meaningful to you.

I usually come away from a conference with ideas for stories or thoughts about how I can improve my work. I've found it very helpful to set a goal or give myself an assignment. For example, after my first conference, I knew I needed more series of images in my portfolio. I gave myself the assignment of taking one existing piece from my folio and adding two more pieces with the same character, and I gave myself two months to do it.

Good luck!

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Jen Betton writes and illustrates for children.

You can find her work at www.jenbetton.com

@jenbetton on Twitter

www.facebook.com/jenbettonillustration on Facebook

Sketching Tools

Everyone has their favorite items for roughing out an idea or sketching on the go. I like to organize my tools into two sketching pouches. One is mostly for line and the other is for value.

I used powdered graphite for value here. All images © Jen Betton 2015

Contents of my "line" drawing pouch.

Erasers: I have 3 (you can never have too many!)

Kneaded eraser: I love how this eraser is gentle on paper and you can control how much or little of the pencil it picks up.

Regular eraser-pen: easier for me to keep clean than a rectangular white eraser.

Tombow Mono-Zero eraser pen: my new love! It can so perfectly pick out the tiniest white lines, or erase exactly the spot you wanted without disturbing other parts of the drawing.

Pencil sharpener: At home I have a nice glass-inkwell style pencil sharpener, but on the go I love this tiny flip-top sharpener from Muji.

6” Ruler: Can be handy for some quick perspective lines.

Pencils:

Mechanical pencils: sooooo not supposed to use these, I know. But they’re handy for blocking in concepts or for when I want a crisp line.

4 or 6B sketching pencil: for darker values or varied line weight.

Colored pencil: Sometimes I like using a blue pencil for underdrawings, then I draw a cleaner version in regular graphite over the top.

Contents of my "value" drawing pouch.

Woodless graphite pencils: in a variety of softnesses – I have a 9B for really rich darks.

Powdered graphite: I LOVE this stuff for soft, atmospheric value. It is super-easy to lift lighter areas out of it.

Cotton balls and q-tips: for applying the powdered graphite.

Shammy cloth: works as a type of soft eraser

Water-Soluble Graphite: It’s a bit like working with black watercolor paint, but with a grainier texture and you can erase it a bit.

Paintbrush: for the water-soluble graphite.

These were done with the water-soluble graphite, working from online reference.

And of course, my Handbook sketch pad. It has a nice tooth for value, and is thick enough for liquid media.

Those are the tools I regularly use – what are yours? I glean new tools from friends all the time (Lisa Anchin showed me the pencil sharpener, and Brooke Boynton Hughes first introduced me to liquid graphite).

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Jen Betton writes and illustrates for children. You can find her work at www.jenbetton.com@jenbetton on Twitterwww.facebook.com/jenbettonillustration on Facebook

Photos Lie: Using Photographs for Color Reference

A lot of us use photographs when painting to help us with our color decisions. To be able to capture how color shifts underwater, or the way fingertips flush at the tips can be invaluable. And although sometimes you might be able to paint from life, most of us don't have the ability to do it all the time. So we use photos. There is just one problem with relying on photos for color information: they lie.

Photographs are not nearly as good as the human eye at picking up subtle color changes, or even accurate value. They tend to have a lot of black in the dark areas of the image, where the human eye would be able to see the form and color in the shadows. This is because anything that the camera does not have enough light to "see", it will render as black. Sunset photographs are a classic example: while the camera does it's best to render the vivid sky, it can't do that and also pick out the darker shapes in the foreground. So you get a silhouetted effect.

Photos tend to differ from observation in the following ways:

1. Value: the camera cannot see both dark darks and light lights at the same time. These areas will become white or black.

2. Hue Variation: similar colors tend to get clumped together so you get a lot less color variation than in nature.

3. Subtlety: Low-light sources of value or color are usually lost.

Here is an example from my own experience:

On the left is a photo I took. On the right is the pastel I did from life just after taking the photo. You can see that the photograph is much duller (I did exaggerate the saturation a little bit in the pastel, but not much), bluer, and the values are very different. The background foliage is blown out and the dark areas of the tree trunks are almost black. Obviously, if you are a good photographer (I'm not), you can counter some of these issues.

So how to use photos for color reference? Here are a few tips:

- If you are taking your own photo, take two shots. For the first, focus on the light area of your shot, and for the second focus on the shadow area. If you are using a digital camera you can see the image lighten and darken depending on where you focus. Use this to get a good image of each area (light and dark) and then use both photographs for your painting. (Also don't use a flash, it will front-light your subject matter – which flattens form – and change the lighting entirely.)

- Paint from life occasionally. It will help you realize when photos are lying to you.

- When not using your own photos, use the best quality photos you can – look on professional photography sites like Getty or Corbis (but be sure not to violate copyright!)

- Make a color study. Shift and add colors, experiment. If you just rely on a photo, you will often just end up copying exactly what you see.

- Change value structure as needed, realizing the photo may over-emphasize darks or blow out lights.

- Consider adding more color variation; evaluate your image to see if areas are becoming too monochromatic. Make a point not to use black or gray in the shadows, and also not to use white for highlights.

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For more information on painting and color:

James Gurney has a marvelous book called Color and Light. His blog is also a treasure trove of information.

I also have a series of posts on color here, covering topics light atmosphere, temperature, and mood.
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Jen Betton writes and illustrates for children.

You can find her work at www.jenbetton.com

@jenbetton on Twitter

www.facebook.com/jenbettonillustration on Facebook

Mice! Color Process

I recently had an art director ask me if I had any mice in my portfolio. Nope! The only mice in my portfolio at the time were microscopic. Cue mouse sketches!

I drew up a bunch of sketches, both to figure out ideas and compositions, but also to get used to mousey anatomy. I decided to develop this one into a full-color piece.

For the color studies I knew I wanted something warm and sunset-feeling (partially because I'd been doing a lot of cold paintings – tons of night and underwater scenes). I collected some color palette images I liked on Pinterest, and did a few color studies.

The general palette didn't change much, but I experimented with values – middle study is dark mice against a light background, bottom is dark background (to better show the rim lighting), and top is in between. It really helps me think about composition to remember it is just an arrangement of light and dark shapes – so each shape is either light on dark or dark on light. I decided to go with the center study.

Process is my friend – I really love approaching a finish with confidence because I know what colors and values I'm using, and I have a refined drawing for a foundation and good reference to look at while I paint. I know lots of other people who don't work this way, but for me, it makes everything smoother and faster.

For more info about color, see my blog series here.

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Jen Betton illustrates and writes for children. You can see more of Jen Betton's mousey sketches here www.facebook.com/jenbettonillustration

More of her work is at these locations online:

Website: www.jenbetton.com

Twitter: @jenbetton

Blog: www.jenbetton.blogspot.com

Removing Texture from Watercolor Scans

A lot of watercolor artists have a texture problem – when the painting is scanned, all that lovely texture that grabs the paint also grabs the light from the scanner, and it can be overly noticeable in light areas of the image. So what are some ways to soften or eliminate this texture?

Some of the KidLitArtists were discussing the different ways they address this issue, and I've compiled their methods here, along with links to tutorials on other sites.

1. Scanning Trick
You scan your image twice, the second time flipping the image 180 degrees on the scanner bed. Then you use Photoshop's Auto Align feature to perfectly line up the two images (this feature is in CS3 and all later versions, it's found under Edit>Auto Align Layers). You can then adjust the opacity of the top layer until you have a nice blend between the two – and the opposite direction to the shadows means they sort of cancel each other out. You can also use layer masks to make more detailed adjustments to the layers.

Image by Elizabeth Baddeley

Tutorial here: http://ebaddeley.com/news/2013/7/9/how-to-scanning-cold-press-watercolor-paper

Good for small paintings that fit entirely on the scanner (unless you have the patience to scan your image in multiple pieces, merge them, and then do it again at 180 degrees!) and paintings that don't have a lot of fine lines and details that might not align perfectly.

2. Smart Blur Filter
For this technique, use the Smart Blur Filter (found under Filter>Blur>Smart Blur), and adjust the settings till you find the right ones to maintain a crisp image while blurring out the texture. (I personally like to duplicate the layer prior to using any filters, and then mixing the two using opacity settings and/or layer masks).

By Gordon and Susan Pritchard

Tutorial here: http://the-print-guide.blogspot.com/2009/02/removing-watercolor-paper-texture-in.html

I haven't used this one much myself, but I think it will probably work best when you have clearly defined edges, and a flat background.

The following two methods basically use different selection methods to isolate the background, and then either delete it, or (my preference) use a layer mask to hide it.

3. Channel Mask

This one removes the background entirely and makes use of the Channels Palette (open it with Window>Channels). You compare the separate channels till you find the one with the closest match to the information you want to select, then you duplicate that channel and use it to select that part of the image. Then Select>Inverse and delete the background. The tutorial goes through this technique in much more detail.

Tutorial here: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/l/blrbps_2fwks.htm

Similar tutorial at the bottom of this page: http://designshack.net/articles/graphics/a-complete-beginners-guide-to-masking-in-photoshop/

This one is good for when you want a white or transparent background, or if you want to replace the background with a different image. The tutorial includes a variety of other selection techniques.

4. Color Range

Andy Musser uses the Color Range feature in Photoshop to make a selection based on color, and then remove the background:.

Use Select>Color Range. Your cursor should be an eye dropper, click on the color you want to remove. To add more colors, or shades of the original color, select the “Eyedroper +” tool (in the Color Range controls) and click on them. The black and white image will show your selection, white is selected and black is unselected.

After creating the selection with Color Range, using the “Refine Edge” controls will refine the selection. Then invert the selection and use a layer mask to remove it.

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Jen Betton writes and illustrates for children.

You can find her work at www.jenbetton.com

@jenbetton on Twitter

www.facebook.com/jenbettonillustration on Facebook

Congrats to Jen Betton, winner of the 2014 New England SCBWI Conference Portfolio Showcase!

This month on KidLitArtists.com, we're going to be doing interviews. I'll be posting mini-interviews with art directors Lauren Rille (Simon & Schuster Children's) and Martha Rago (HarperCollins Children's) later this week.

But first, we at KidLitArtists want to congratulate our own Jen Betton (Mentee Class of 2012) on winning the Portfolio Showcase at the New England SCBWI Conference this past weekend!

I'm sure Jen will be posting about the NESCBWI14 conference and the showcase on her blog soon but until then, I encourage you to visit Jen's website and browse her amazing art at JenBetton.com.

CONGRATULATIONS, JEN!

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Debbie Ridpath Ohi (Mentee Class of 2010) just came back from her very first book tour celebrating the launch of NAKED!, a new picture book written by Michael Ian Black and published by Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers. Also recently launched: seven Judy Blume classics reissued as middle grade by S&S with Debbie's illustrations on the covers. You can follow Debbie on Twitter at @inkyelbows.

Process: Jen Betton

My process always begins with thumbnails. Usually I do a bunch of them, very small and very rough. When I find one that works well for the story and is visually interesting, then I'll blow it up a little bit and work out the value structure.

Thumbnail

Value study

Then I started collecting reference and working on a finished sketch. This included reference for the moon, clouds, night scenes, hot air balloons, kids, rope ladders, cities from above... in total I accumulated about 140 images for reference. I didn't use all of them, but the complexity of the scene and my inability to photograph the scene myself meant I collected a lot of images to work from.

I also used kneaded eraser to create a little mock-up of the kids in the balloon basket, to see what the lighting looked like.

Kneaded eraser kids, in a cup – my no-frills maquette.

I created the drawing on a number of different sheets of tracing paper, the kids and balloon separate from the city so I could move them around in photoshop and composite them.

I used a curved 3 pt perspective on the city – headache!!!

Finished drawing

Next step is color studies.

After that I printed the drawing onto thin 500 strathmore board, and started to paint (I usually use the thick strathmore illustration board and transfer the drawing with graphite paper, but the city was detailed enough I decided to try printing it on a thinner sheet).

I started painting with a light colored watercolor wash to seal the drawing and provide a base tone. Sometimes I'll also paint some base values as well – as I did here, on the buildings.

Then I'll usually start with the part of the painting that would be the easiest to screw up, so that if something goes wrong I can start over quickly. In this case, I needed to paint the big, loose wash that would cover the whole painting and define the sky. I would also need to lift the moon out of the wash before it dried, in order to keep it light. I could have used frisket, but I didn't want to risk getting a really crisp edge on the moon.

I put down the wash very loosely, very wet, with a wide, flat brush. I added splatters of purple and green with a toothbrush, light spots with a water bottle, and I lifted the moon out of the wash with a brush and a paper towel.

Then I moved on to painting the town, basket, and kids.

And added some colored pencil in the light areas.

And a little photoshop, and done!

You can see more of Jen Betton's work at her website: www.jenbetton.com,

and more process work on her blog at www.jenbetton.blogspot.com

Twitter: @jenbetton

FB: www.facebook.com/jenbettonillustration

Inspiring Black and White Art - by Andrea Offermann

Gustave Doré: illustration for "London", 1876

I shared my experience with working on a papercut cover for „The Kairos Mechanism“ recently on my website, and talked about my process at the wonderful lost weekend at David Diaz’ house that Jen and Debbie already posted about. I have been fascinated with black and white art for a long time, and in view of the Tomie dePaola competition deadline coming up and the fact that the illustration has to be black and white, I would like to share some black and white art that I have come across and been very inspired by:

Arthur Rackham: illustration for "Sleeping Beauty", 1920

Arthur Rackham: I have been a great admirer of his work for a long time, but only recently found out that he illustrated two fairytales, „Sleeping Beauty“ and „Cinderella“, in black and white silhouettes. His artwork is intricately layered, I especially loved this illustration from Sleeping beauty, where he manages to show different layers of depth only with black and white. The image is elegant, beautiful and holds loads of storytelling and action while managing to appear clear and simple at the same time, incredible!

A still from Lotte Reininger's "The Adventures of Prince Achmed", 1926

Lotte Reininger: She was a German papercut artist and animator in the first half of the 20th century and completed the first full length animated film, „The Adventures of Achmed“, in 1926. Inspired by traditional eastern shadow theater, she invented a technique to adapt silhouette for animated film. Her figures, backgrounds and compositions are beautiful, and it’s amazing how she can convey emotion and acting with her silhouette figures. Here is an excerpt from „The Adventures of Achmed“:

and her version of „Cinderella“:

Karel Zeman: he was a czech artist, animator and director who experimented with stop motion animation, artwork, mix of painted backgrounds and real backgrounds, stilization and very creative special effects. For many of his feature films he drew inspiration from artists who had illustrated the books he was turning into movies, such as Gustave Doré’sillustrations for „Baron Munchhausen“, or Zdenek Burian’s illustrations for „Journey to the Center of the Earh“, thus creating a unique artistic vision.

Gustave Doré: illustration for "Baron Munchhausen", 1866

Especially „Die Erfindung des Verderbens“ based on a Jules Verne book is unique, filmed in black and white and using stilized line work background and overlays, patterned costumes and stop motion animation to convey the surreal world of the film and create a unique artistic style. Here is the trailer:

I hope you will enjoy these examples!

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Andrea Offermann recently illustrated Kate Milford’s „The Broken Lands“, Cornelia Funke’s „Ghost Knight“ and Sonya Hartnett’s „The Midnight Zoo“. You can see her work at www.andreaoffermann.com .

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