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.

Happily Ever After Children's Literature Festival

So after a not so profitable (but super fun) day at South Bend's Art Beat last Saturday, I've signed on to be at the Happily Ever After Children's Lit Fest this coming Sunday (August 25, 2-6 in Niles, MI). It's a fundraiser to help local families adopt children with special needs.

I really hope to adopt some day and I've seen how good it can be when families open their hearts to adoptive children, so I'm really excited to be a part of this. The tickets are $7 (kids 4 & under free) and there will be several children's authors there, children's books and children's games. I'll be donating a percentage of my sales to the cause and I'm providing a coloring page too. I'll post it on the blog afterward for people who couldn't be there. It should be a fantastic day, so if you're going to be in the area come on out!

Update: I actually won't be there, I just now realized I double booked myself, but there are still going to be lots of fun things happening and it's still a super good cause, so you should check it out!

January Colors

I didn't live on a hill at all when I was a kid (or now for that matter), but there were parks nearby where we went sledding every winter and had a blast. 

 A wintery coloring page.
Feel free to print and color, but not to profit from or use in any other way. This is strictly a coloring page.

Christmas Time Is Here

I'm not a super festive person. Left to my own devices I don't really decorate for Christmas and of course any kind of seasonal clothing is out of the question. I have no explanation as to why, it's just how I am. But I do enjoy that other people are festive. I love the lights, when they're done tastefully - which is apparently not going to happen in my neighborhood this year. I love the shop displays. And I love carolers. They're so cute and picturesque.  So feel free to print out this coloring sheet for the you or the kiddos to color (you know you want to) . Please don't use it for any other purpose, personal or commercial. It is for coloring only.

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.

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.

God Is Bigger Than You Think

Check out my flickr stream to see a bigger, better version of this.

This piece started out as a sketch during youth group, I often do fun things with the message titles and since we were talking about how huge the universe is I added this little girl with her telescope.
I never intended the background to be so grungy - but I just kept adding textures. Almost entirely from Bittbox though the stars are from JoannaStar on Deviant Art.

Hopefully I'll have this available as an 8x10 print in my etsy shop soon.

All Images are property of Melody DuVal, please do not use in any way without 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