What Medium to Use

 Getting started back on my third book requires me to reassess my materials.  This got me thinking about a new blog subject, What Medium to Use.  This was a big challenge for me when first starting out on my children’s books adventure.

Before I had a subject or knew what my story would be, I began drawing.  There was a big snowstorm approaching and I was at the local BJ’s stocking up on all that stuff you need when you may not be able to leave the house for a day.  I spotted a large pad of plain paper and a large box of assorted colored pencils. Perfect! I can purchase these items and start my drawing while snowed in.  This was the start of my book illustrating endeavor.

The snowstorm really never hit, but I began to draw with the array of colors in the box of pencils I purchased.  My first subject was dogs.  I was going to draw dogs, a yellow lab to be exact.  I drew several dogs using the pencils, each got a little better each time. However, I ran into an Issue, one of my fingers literally went numb.  I also was not feeling what I was using was quite right.  So I moved on and tried a few more drawing utensils.

Pastels, I thought.  My husband purchased me a pretty pack of pastel chalk.  I tried to make this work, but just didn’t either have the right paper or just didn’t know how to use these correctly.  I had also purchased some markers.  A pretty pack of water color markers on sale for use in coloring those adult coloring books. I think I was on to something here. I was having some success with the markers and was liking what I was producing. 

I decided to purchase a couple of higher end brush tip markers and give those a try and bingo, that was it. These were Prismacolor brush tip markers. The brush tip gave a nice smooth finish. I was able to blend them a bit to give some shading effects to my drawings.  I started with just a few makers, mostly shades of gray for my first book The Colorless Forest, where the first few pages were nothing but grey and white.  I slowly added new colors to my collection as I moved on through this first book.  The collection grew as I worked on Hanna’s New Skill. I now have a pretty good collection of markers.

I guess I have become an art and drawing geek, because I love just looking at the bucket of markers I now have on hand.  I'm now ready and fully supplied to continue work on book number three, The Answer Box, where the main character is a Yellow Lab.

Very beginning artwork (RUFF!)
Top: Pencils, Bottom: Water Color Markers

Prismacolor Markers (Much better)