IMC Report - The Assignment

Wednesday, my daughter and her son returned to faraway and with heavy heart, I ventured down to the studio to unearth all my IMC trappings. As Fate would have it, the day before she left, an email from Rebecca Guay announced that our assignments from IMC were due at midnight on Thursday if we wanted to be considered for ImagineFx's article. (Each year, they select 5-10 IMC students to be highlighted in their awesome magazine). Needless to say, I was facing an all-nighter if I was going to finish. As I have posted before, the assignments were divided into three catagories: fantasy, comics, and children's books. I picked the latter. I chose to do a page from an idea I've had floating around about children's blankets and all the things kids do with them with their imagination. My illustration is about the blanket becoming butterfly wings.

I began with thumbnails and selected this one.

Developed it further and reversed it.

Here's the development of the little piggie.

Reworked some more, especially the little girl and here is my final sketch. I darken it here but when I printed it out on watercolor paper, I put a ghost layer over it in Photoshop to lighten the pencil.

First and second wash of watercolor.

Third and final pass on assignment. This was as far as I got at IMC. I felt like I was losing something in her expression (especially her eyes). The initial color on her wings was too dark and I discovered that Lanaquelle wc paper doesn't allow for the lifting of color too well. I figured I would start over at home, although I was fairly pleased with the flowers.

But I didn't get a chance to begin again. I tried to fix the major problems. Added more watercolor throughout and then started with the colored pencils on top of that.

And, the final piece.