all the Megans that get up...make Ferlins in color

What happens when a Megan like myself wakes up early...Well I am not a morning person but my husband woke up for a new job  this morning and I as well would like to take advantage of the extra hours that could be applied to my artsy-ness. I have always liked the idea of waking with the sun or in winter watching the sky begin to light up for the day. The idea of having those few magic hours of the morning to myself where anything is possible is quite alluring. So although my sweet warm bed will always call to me, I hope the promise of creativity will win.Hopefully the weeks to come are full of projects getting finished, old ideas getting attention, and new blog posts most of all.

For this week all of my attention is going to be on new posts and working on my children's book "Ferlin and his paper hat." In case I have not told you about "Ferlin and his paper hat", it's a children's book that I have written and illustrated. So far I have,well, written it and finalized all the illustrations, scanned in and colored all my pencil sketches on the computer, added my text, and have done five final pastel images to be used in the printed book. I am now getting the book ready to be sent out to publishers which includes; adding text blocks to the pages for easier readability, scanning in my pastel images, printing and putting together book moc ups, and designing a finished layout with my pastel. I hope a publisher likes my pastel images and sees the book being finished with them as I do. I have colored my entire book on the computer so not only do I have a set of colors to fallow when I work with my pastels but it also gives viewers a more finished book experience. Most people say "isn't it finished already?" and then I show them them how the pastels look in comparison. Maybe I should do the same here and end my post.

This process has all taken a looooooong time and it is so strange to sum it up in just a few sentences so if any of my explaining seems not detailed enough and you would like any further details of my process let me know what you would like to hear about.

I will put up the picts for this post latter this evening so be sure to check it out..... and da da da dah here they are just as I said and all before the clock strikes midnight!(36 minutes before to be exact)

1. Ferlin trying on his hat. This was the first sketch for this image.

2. As I continued to draw Felin he became more refined and he wans't so sketchy anymore.

3. Then he got to try out his colors, which were all done in photoshop using the lasso tool and layers.

4. After his colors were decided I printed the line image of Ferlin, from step 2 on a sheet of tan colored canson paper and went to town with my pastels....then I took his picture with my phone, but of course I still need to scan it to get a nice hi resolution image that is print worthy!