All over the world contributors to The Sketchbook Project must be trying to get their book finished in time, as it has to be sent off on Jan. 15. I had a few hours to spend on it today and looking over what I had done so far I decided to start on the table cloth next.
I loosely drew the cloth in alternating lines and wondered if orange might be good.
No, redder is better
May be even more red. And it definitely needed a little more detail so I threw on some little hearts.
Next question.. Should there be a background colour at all?
Hell, no. Tried all sorts of blue and green, but I like the white much better.
And moved them to the right place..
And there they are.
I actually worked on the book for another four hours, going up and down all the 30 or so layers of hands and apples and butterflies, changing things as I went. Much the same way I used to write my articles, come to think of it: when I get stuck I just go over the different parts until I find a thing I can work on a bit. And then another one, changing, cleaning up, discarding. I always come unstuck.
Finally I made a copy of the entire file and started to merge layers together. In the end I had 19 layers left, or 19 pages of the book and it was getting easier to leaf through them to get a feeling of how the story unfolds.
It is clear that two or three of the pages need to be done again, I don’t like them. I will hopefully get to that tomorrow. Next the colours need synchronizing a bit. And by now I really need to think hard about a few extra tiny story lines. I guess it would have been practical and logical to do that thinking way earlier. Need to take a note of that ;-)
I am hoping for a creative spark, because right now I am a little dissatisfied with how it looks as a whole.
But.. time to put away the Christmas tree and think about dinner!
really love watching this process!
I love seeing this process and the picture suddenly come to life when you put the child's hands behind the bowl, funny! I don't know how you don't lose your mind using photoshop, all those layers, argh!!! I would give up! Congrats on the sketchbook progress!
yummy yummy i feel about following this process! love posts like these, kitty! more more more! love the new image, prefer the greenish to bring out the red some more. can't wait to see the end result! how are you going to process this back to the sketchbook? will you unfold it and print this on?
(could you please put the sidebar back to the right, my mind can't handle changes in a goord format ;))
Thanks Ellen.. I am not sure about a coloured background, in my mind's eye the background is white, but it isn't Jan. 15 yet so we'll see! I often will make drastic changes at a late stage. I am going to print these photoshop files on archival Epson art paper and put them in the book as pages, all on the right hand side, blank page on the left. I envision it as a flip-through book. I am actually still thinking of it as a very simple movie but I don't know if it will really work as a slideshow since it is not very sophisticated as a story. I'll try it out. And I actually like the sidebar on the left.. feels more logical in a way since we read from left to right. Right?
What a great tutorial ;-) now I know why it looks like a real wooden print. Lovely.
I love to see your work evolution… Nice !