Here's my entry! I had a lot of fun designing the cover, especially since I hate how the German one looks haha

Little Red Riding Wood is my favorite story and I design the little "Red" and related the title "RED" made it stand out on the book cover for April Proko Challenge.

Hi everyone! This month's challenge is one of my favorite and seeing all the amazing book cover illustrations I just wish that book publishers hired illustrators more often. :)   I love the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and my entry is for The Hound of the Baskervilles. First I did the thumbnailing, sketching, inking and adding texture with watercolor traditionally on paper and then I colored it digitally.

This one is for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I spent way too long on the little unnecessary details here and wish I’d spent longer on the cat! This one is so out of my comfort zone in style and colour but hopefully it fits the brief. I feel like trees should be super easy but I really struggled with these. I need to practice maybe another 1000 to get there! Critiques super appreciated x

My entry :)

Holy crap. One minute before the due cut off. Yikes. Haha. What fun it has been. For this challenge, to think of children's books, it took me a while to get going. I then remembered "Huge Harold," by Bill Pete. For me, it was the old victorian house on the hill in which Harold ran in for shelter for the storm. I loved that mystery, of an old abandoned house. I didn't know or identify as a kid, that I'm a fan of architecture, and this challenge really brought that to me. I also am a fan of chateau's and statuary, ornate decoration and ornamentation. I love lavish gardens, spaces filled with art and mystery, every element lending to beauty rather than mere utility. Amazing cars, also interest me. Classic styling. Thankfully, sports cars in the last decade have had some sexy curves added into them as well, in design. Milo, has a whole mansion...

Is there a preferred resolution or canvas size for our final upload? What dimensions should we upload at, as an ideal, or the parameters that would be preferred, so as to not go too small or too large. Thanks much. What a fun contest this has been. Stretching me to my utmost, scrambling for understanding, skill sets, and so much more. Haha. Fun!

I always have a hard time scanning or taking pictures of my artwork! :D these are some pics of my piece, I've finished all the analog work, ink on bristol paper, next is to color it a bit on digital, just a little. :)

This is sort of an introduction for me. I hope I'm not too long winded with the post, so only read ahead if you are one of those who have time and curiosity, I don't want to bog anyone down with consuming valuable time. It's clear I have poor skill in drawing, hence my being here on Proko. I want to oil paint, but find I need a huge deep dive into anatomy study, learning to draw, and more, then all that is entailed with the techniques with oils, or other mediums. Achieving skill and know how is a big deal, and oh, that we could live for hundreds of years to appreciate art, and become good at creating it (to sort of rephrase what Marshall told Stan in one of their Draftsman podcasts). Well, this book cover design sounded fun. I worked on ideas, trying to develop a cute character, and I've not cracked that nut yet. I just discovered my limit of 10 image uploads here, I had 20 prepped to show my processes. I abandoned for sake of time, the first idea of a character, a little boy, and for the next idea, I'm doing a little rabbit. Huge Harold, was one of the books that came to mind, in thinking of favorite books in childhood. The most impressive page in all of that book for me was the old victorian house on the hill in which Harold enters for refuge from a storm. Amazing what sticks out to you as a kid. That house! The mystery of the architecture! What a space to explore. Here are some thumbnails of a rough cover design of a rabbit who will take possession of this mansion. I just discovered listening to a Jon Levi video on Youtube this week, about this 1885 constructed "Insane asylum" literally that stood less than 500 yards from where I am in Provo, Utah. I used that as architectural reference here for a book cover. I am improving in my thumbnail sketches, but I need to get with it to get moving on this project before the due date is up. It will be fun to see all of the amazing submissions. (And I didn't intend for thumbnails to be uploaded, hence my drawing them on the back of some junk mail, sorry for the crease and folds in the paper).

I enjoy drawing people more than beans. I found trying to apply the bean to figure drawing more enjoyable than draw just beans. Any pointers on how I could do this better would be very appreciated. (Part 3)

That skull looks great. For sure, armatures and good things used to build them would be a valued topic for me. An additional aspect of insight might be with all the potential aspects of what to use as media, from oil based clay, water based clay, plaster, options for molds, digitizing and reproducing artwork, etc. Aluminum casting seems to be a thing now, and maybe much cheaper than bronze? 3D printing? What options are there in that realm? Marketplace? What do people want, what sells? How can we get our works put into spaces where they might be valued? Some general insights of any of that kind of thing would be valuable commentary from your perspective.

Oh where do I start!! Hair, that damn pesky thing. Sculpting different emotions. Eye depth in the face, I struggle with that one! subtle mouth expressions. Oh, just everything!

I’m gearing up to oil paint down the road. Well, that in and of itself is super complex, as beginning attempts have shown. I am now getting down to basics, lots of drawing to be done, skills to learn, a gargantuan need to learn anatomy, and then mixing paint will come later, so that when I actually use canvas and paints, I can create something of value and not some monstrosity to be found in a thrift store or trash bin.  I’m wondering what is advice of practicing digitally versus real pen, and paper, pencil or charcoal in developing skills? Any thoughts?

That was fun to watch and discover a totally new tool and idea of using an iPad for digital art. I’ll look up that app now, out of curiosity.