Back when I was designing characters for Nasty Bugs.
A page or two from my sketch book
Here is a little image of a page or two from my sketch book.
Takes me back, I had just finished an e-book, (self published) called Tickle Bugs. Back off, it was for kids. Any way, when I got this buggy job from Dutton. I just had to design and draw a bunch of cute little bugs again. Fun huh.
Nasty Bugs, by Lee Bennett Hopkins (Author) , Will Terry (Illustrator)
These sketches are characters that made their debut in a book called Nasty Bugs. It’s a really fun book and I couldn’t wait to start painting it as soon as all my sketches were finally approved.
I remember I was still trying to figure out how to draw with my Wacom tablet at the time, I could paint with it but I still wasn’t able to get the sensitivity I get with pencil and paper. Perhaps it was the lack of texture provided by the tablet – or the disconnect between my hand, eye, and computer monitor, maybe I’m just stupe. Anyway, I would continue to force myself to practice it until frustration would eventually win and I would hit print and finish it on paper. That practice has paid off by the way.
A page from Nasty Bugs
Love how this one project turned out. Painting in Photoshop makes it so much more do-able to paint in the stink, undo it if it isn’t just right, do it over and adjust the transparency and color til it looks like stink. Or smoke or steam. (there is now steam tool in a Photoshop plug in by the way. That was an April fool’s prank. Sorry. 
if you missed that one you really need to check out our April 1, 2014 blog post. It is still fun to share to unsuspecting artists and artist wannabes for a good prank.