Just in time for the holiday’s! I am proud to release our latest books!
Our Process
This is a little video I shot showing Katie using her painting sponge. In the past, we used to use a but I think the sponge tool is easier for her to hold and I like the texture it makes.
Creating The Counting Dragonflies Background
When we need to paint backgrounds I try and guide Katie to do a gradient color pattern. Once I’ve scanned the picture into the computer I can then move the picture around and choose the area that has the best color and texture.
This picture is the before…
This is the after shot that I used for the background for Counting Dragonflies. With the help of photoshop, I can brighten the color sample that I picked from the original painting.
Creating the Counting Starfish Background
Creating the new Counting Starfish book I needed to re-do the book because I originally created it in PowerPoint for a class I was taking. I needed to distinguish the new book from the old book so here are a few of my brainstorming ideas.
I wanted something that resembled water, but use Katie’s artwork. So off I went into the rabbit hole of youtube and found some amazing digital artists one guy in particular (Ross Draws). I saw that he was using pictures and incorporating them into his drawings to give it more dimension and texture. Bingo!
The next thing I needed to figure out was how to merge the photograph I took off the back of a cruise ship in the Caribbean with Katie’s original painting in photoshop. I am still a novice in many of these powerful software programs after all these years. In addition, Ross uses different graphic arts software programs and equipment than what I have.
Then By Accident Poof!
After spending hours fiddling around in photoshop’s settings I got this image. It was perfect! Since then, I’ve tried to go back and reproduce the same effect and I can’t figure out what I did! š±
Creating the Counting Snowflakes Background
Creating a background for Counting Snowflakes was challenging. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for other than it had to be a different blue than Counting Starfish. I did a lot of brainstorming on this one. I played with all the different colors that we used in our snowflake paintings. Here are the samples I came up with.
These were ok, but nothing popped for me….in addition, none of them have Katie’s painting in them, which was something I wanted but couldn’t figure out how to recreate since I did the ship’s wake. š©
This is a picture that we created using tissue paper. A family member of ours makes these cool modern art pictures using a special type of bleeding tissue paper. We but it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for to place the snowflakes on top. So I loaded it into photoshop and played with the smudge tool and color range.
Still not sure which background worked best, I decided to post 3 of the pictures on my FaceBook page and let the group decide. Hands down, everyone picked Katie’s painting.
How Many Books Planned For This Series?
The answer short answer is 11 titles scheduled so far. And the rest will depend on how long Katie is willing to paint with me.
The good news is we have enough paintings completed for about 25 books or more. Then there is my ability to dream up the next nature-themed book to be considered. In addition, my technical skill levels using professional graphic art software programs to create books as well.