Saturday, August 21, 2010

Storms & Brainstorms

August in NC is thunderstorm season. I always feel a bit crazy as the storms approach-- maybe it's the electricity in the atmosphere.

I've been full of crazy ideas lately too, all waiting in the clouds, impatient for the moment when they can make their way across the atmosphere to earth. I finally have a stretch of time without tight deadlines, & I'm so very ready to release that storm of ideas!

This is an illustration from my children's book in progress, The Old Man and the Cat by Anthony Holcroft (see earlier posts on my main blog, Curious Art).

The background texts & diagrams are scanned from antique encyclopedias, music books, maps, dictionaries & science textbooks. These are printed on archival paper, mounted on stretched canvas, & the painting is done with Golden acrylics & Winsor & Newton Sceptre Gold watercolor brushes. I'll show more about this process in upcoming posts.

4 comments:

Marit Cooper said...

Beautifully executed, I love it :-)

Linda Hensley said...

I love this idea and nicely done too!

Anonymous said...

I love the charged atmosphere in the painting and the background is great. Thanks for sharing some of your process. Oh, and thanks for the comment.

MrBibleHead said...

Very nice Leah! Love the layout and the colors. So perfect!!!