Eclair - Children's Book Illustration

I haven't been doing much personal illustration because a lot has been going on in my life the past 6 months. Not the least of which is that I'm now illustrating a children's book series by M. Weidenbenner. The first book is called Eclair Goes to Stella's and it's about a little girl whose parents need to leave her and her sister with their grandmother, Stella, for a while. Clair is super-duper, not-at-all psyched about this and tries everything she can to get out of it. But, Grandma's farm has it's perks, so she may yet be swayed.

It's not finished yet, but when it's available on Amazon I will certainly be posting a link.

Wedding Poster

Last December I got an interesting illustration request. This neat couple was having their wedding at an old fashioned movie theater and wanted an illustration designed to be a movie poster for their wedding.  It was such a unique and fun idea and I was thrilled to work on it. But I never saw the finished product because the the theater has their own custom printing done.

But yesterday the bride emailed me some photos from the day!

It's so neat to see it, not just printed out, but in the theater's poster window! And with Jessica and Justin too! How cool.

Valentine Cutie

This sweetie is all set for candy hearts and roses.

I know a lot of single people are not in love with valentine's day. The dramatic wear black, the bitter post facebook rants, the embarrassed ignore it.

Personally, I delight in valentine's day. It easily wins the classiest holiday color scheme and all the over decor is cute enough to use year round. V-day has the dubious honor of being the only holiday I'll actually be festive for.

Some years I go to parties with friends, this year I'll probably be alone again, sipping pink whipped cream from my white-chocolate mocha. I love it all.

What's your favorite holiday?

Pajama Sale - Because early isn't bad enough

Every year the local merchants have a "pajama sale". They don't sell pajamas, but they do offer discounts which you have to be wearing your PJs to get. This is in addition to opening crazy early and ending all the best deals before 8 am.

I've gone a couple of years to photograph the people in their jammies, which are often outrageous. I don't think I can handle going again this year, but that doesn't mean I can't design some cute graphics for our Pajama Sale section to convince other people to go.

Laundry

It's been a few years since I've had to use a Laundromat. Even since I've moved into an apartment without a washer & dryer I've been doing my laundry at the house of a generous friend. But my friend is out of town & someone I don't know is house-sitting.  I could conceivably waltz in there and do my laundry anyway... but I don't know that I'm up for that much awkward.

Fortunately there's a laundromat not far from my home. A few years ago I was driving 30 minutes to do my laundry. I lived in an apartment with no washer/dryer hookup. The landlord conveniently owned a laundromat across the street. There no storage space either and the landlord conveniently owned a u-store-it across the street. These things gave me pause, but the bigger issue was that the dryers in the landlord-owned laundromat burnt people's clothes. Not mine, but my roommate's clothing came back visibly singed. Next closest laundromat? Two towns away. Oh Indiana.

The laundromat is over-priced and wildly inconvenient, even when it's nearby. You can't leave and generally, if you're me, you can't talk to anyone because everyone else is speaking Spanish. Unlesss of course I need to tell anyone, "the princess is crying in the bathroom."  Rosetta Stone = Fail. But, one thing about the laundromat is that it's actually a decent place to sketch, because what else are you going to do?

 

I have never witnessed kids racing in the laundry carts, though there are usually a few of them playing hide'n-go-seek or tag. But if you were a kid, wouldn't you want to play in the laundry carts? My family never did laundry at the laundromat, but I feel fairly certain that my sisters and I would have tried this.

Sub-Sublime

I'm deathly afraid of skin cancer, so tanning beds are not my thing. On the other hand, neither is snow-white skin - especially when it's just my legs. Normally this doesn't matter because I wear pants year round (hence the whiteness), but on the rare occasion that I don a skirt - particularly a short one...well.

So I bought some bronzer, hoping to make my legs glow a bit less. It was "instant", but not. So it wasn't until the next morning, the day of my close friend's wedding rehearsal that my legs matched the rest of me. Except of course the bits where I had somehow gotten dabs of bronzer on my already tan arms.

I spent half the day at the office panicking and looking up how to take bronzer off skin. Scrubbing, of course, I had tried. Nothing happened.

So after work I bought lemon juice and used cotton balls to scrub it onto my skin. It worked a bit, but finally I resorted to what some people on the internet had said would "take the bronzer right off" and others had warned would have a bad reaction with skin - hydrogen peroxide. Well I know it irritates your skin and shouldn't be used in cuts because it can hinder healing, but on the other hand my mom used to use it on us all the time so how bad could it be?

Yeah, I know, you're thinking I got a rash or took off the top layer of my skin or something, but really it went pretty well. It didn't take the bronzer "right off" but it did fade it alot, except for a couple tiny splotches which refuse to fade. It was at least enough to keep anyone from commenting on it.

Curly Girls

These were just little practice doodles for an illustration of the little girl with the little curl in the middle of her forehead. The one on the left is minorly based on a girl in an old cocoa advertisement  and the one on the right is somewhat based off Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

I just love the ruffled collar and apron on this girl. And her sweet face, which I can't really duplicate in my style of drawing.
 But I didn't want her to have just plain braids, I really wanted to emphasize the curly hair, so looked to Dorothy's style (from about the same era) for how to do those curls.

For my day job I do a lot of period illustrations (1930s-1940s mostly). I have (on loan) a battered primer from the 30s that I use to get an idea of the clothing and I also rely on  blogs dedicated to old advertisements and photos. Beauty Is A Thing of the Past has all kinds of great photos from hair dressers magazines that are fantastic in figuring out how to style hair. And Found In Mom's Basement is a terrific source of vintage advertising. I've learned a lot doing these illustrations.

I've also done a ton of Amish illustrations. If you're ever up in Shipshewana, IN you can look out for the Childhood Chuckles, Farmyard Funnies & Thoughts with Thelma book series. The first two are collections of stories sent in by (mostly) Amish people and the Thelma series is a series of stories by a local Amish wife and mother who lives on a diary farm.

All of this is great fun and I adore it. But sometimes you just want to draw something modern.

Clay Chic's Bad Hair Day Earring's

I designed this curly haired girl for Clay Chic's Bad Hair Day Earrings. She makes these huge sterling earrings that are so stunning no one will be looking at your hair. She'll be making hang tags with this image on them.

All images on this blog are property of Melody DuVal. Please do not use with-out permission.

Waiting

My computer has the personality of a moody teenager. Sometimes it's a hard worker, eager to help. Other times, for no apparent reason, it turns surly and refuses to do one thing.

During these times I doodle. Sometimes my doodles are my more interesting art. I don't have to play it safe, get the angles and perspective right. I just draw what I want.

This was drawn in pencil, so it didn't scan very well, but layering some colors on top of the line art and playing with the blending mode in photoshop brought out more of the details.

That's one thing about pencil, you get all these nice, fine, wispy details, but they're not much good for a finished project. You lose them once you've neatly inked the drawing in.

Of course, some times you see them brought out on purpose. A few years back Hot Topic had a great "Alice in Wonderland" shirt that had sketches from the Disney film of Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. And recently, in Target, there were plates, cups, etc. that had sketches of Alice and other animated film characters (all Disney). I loved the sketches, though I didn't care for the added art the designer used to "complete" the work.

This Little Piggy

Some rejected illustrations, they were hoping for nudist pigs

Real Amish

You think I'm exaggerating. I know. I can only speak the truth. Whether you believe it or not is up to you.

Idealism

This is an old one. Click to see larger.

Art As Expression

I do a lot of drawing and while a small portion ends up in my etsy shop as finished art, I thought it would be fun to have a place to put some of my fun doodles and cartoons.




I have a lot of pent up frustration from waiting in grocery store lines.