Climbing trees

Climbing trees is something I used to love doing as a child. I suppose I was a teensy bit of a ‘Tom Boy’, surrounded by mostly boys in my street it isn’t hard to understand why!

Climbing trees or indeed anything to do with trees in general I love to draw! You can give a tree so much character, even a bit of a personality. Trees can be comforting and pretty or creepy and nightmarish. This tree is just a nice old garden tree and the scene is mid-summer and it’s a hot sunny day. It’s another illustration from my picture book I am slowly putting together.

This illustration has been sketched using a soft brown coloured pencil and then it has been digitally coloured, using a set of brushes in Photoshop. Although a keen eye may notice some real paint in some areas – take a look. I like the idea of combining both digital and conventional means of creating artwork, rather than all one or the other. They both have the pluses and minuses when it comes to creating an image. For purely practical reasons I have discovered that digitally creating artwork does seem to work quite well when working on very large format books. I like the fact you can zoom in, right down to pixel level to correct, enhance or edit work.

I hope to share more of these illustrations on my on-line portfolio in the next week or so. Maybe climbing trees too…

Anyway, I hope you like this image, because there are more coming! To see more of my work, try going to childrensillustrators.com.

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