I finally got my illustration portfolio site up! There are still a few things here and there that I would want to change but let me know what you think!

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I finally got my illustration portfolio site up! There are still a few things here and there that I would want to change but let me know what you think!

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One small but important aspect of your marketing/personal branding efforts online is creating your avatar. Every social network site and blogs use one. This small bit of square image can do a lot to help people develop a relationship with you if you keep two simple things in mind.

1. Keep your avatar consistant across the board.
By using the same avatar no matter where you go online helps people easily identify you whether it's on Twitter, Facebook, or a comment that you leave on a blog.

Useful tools to make sure you can have the same avatar even when commenting on other people's blogs are services like Gravatar and your Google profile for commenting on Google Blogger sites. The  majority of your fellow illustrators use Blogger.

2. Use an illustration representative of your style as your avatar.
As illustrators we have a leg-up compared to a lot of people in other professions out there about what we can communicate using our avatars.
By using your illustration you can:
1) show that you're an illustrator,
2) show what kind of illustrator you are,
3) show what medium you use.

That's a ton of information that you can communicate to people just by using an illustration instead of a photo for your avatar!

My personal experiences with avatars:
I really felt the difference between using a photo and an illustration for an avatar on Twitter.

<----When I first delved into the world of social networking a couple of months ago, I used photo like this.

While it was appropriate and professional, you couldn't really tell anything about me if I followed you or replied to one of your posts on Twitter. You would have had to take the extra steps of clicking on my photo, reading my profile, and possibly visiting my website to see that I am a children's book illustrator. Then after all that maybe you would decide to follow me on Twitter too.

Isn't that a whole lot to expect a person to do when you know there is a way to skip all those steps to communicate what you're about instantly?

<---When I switched to my illustration avatar, I immediately felt the difference in the rate of replies that I got and the number of people who followed me on Twitter.
People now could easily see that 1) I'm probably an illustrator 2) I illustrate in the children's book style  3) I use watercolors. All that information without even clicking to see the profile information.


So illustrators, make your avatars work hard for your marketing and personal branding efforts. It's a small and easy thing that you can do right now to improve the first-impression you give to the world out there.

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One small but important aspect of your marketing/personal branding efforts online is creating your avatar. Every social network site and blogs use one. This small bit of square image can do a lot to help people develop a relationship with you if you keep two simple things in mind.

1. Keep your avatar consistent across the board.
By using the same avatar no matter where you go online helps people easily identify you whether it's on Twitter, Facebook, or a comment that you leave on a blog.

Useful tools to make sure you can have the same avatar even when commenting on other people's blogs are services like Gravatar and your Google profile for commenting on Google Blogger sites. The  majority of your fellow illustrators use Blogger.

2. Use an illustration representative of your style as your avatar.
As illustrators we have a leg-up compared to a lot of people in other professions out there about what we can communicate using our avatars.
By using your illustration you can:
1) show that you're an illustrator,
2) show what kind of illustrator you are,
3) show what medium you use.

That's a ton of information that you can communicate to people just by using an illustration instead of a photo for your avatar!

My personal experiences with avatars:
I really felt the difference between using a photo and an illustration for an avatar on Twitter.

<----When I first delved into the world of social networking a couple of months ago, I used photo like this.

While it was appropriate and professional, you couldn't really tell anything about me if I followed you or replied to one of your posts on Twitter. You would have had to take the extra steps of clicking on my photo, reading my profile, and possibly visiting my website to see that I am a children's book illustrator. Then after all that maybe you would decide to follow me on Twitter too.

Isn't that a whole lot to expect a person to do when you know there is a way to skip all those steps to communicate what you're about instantly?

<---When I switched to my illustration avatar, I immediately felt the difference in the rate of replies that I got and the number of people who followed me on Twitter.
People now could easily see that 1) I'm probably an illustrator 2) I illustrate in the children's book style  3) I use watercolors. All that information without even clicking to see the profile information.


So illustrators, make your avatars work hard for your marketing and personal branding efforts. It's a small and easy thing that you can do right now to improve the first-impression you give to the world out there.

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For this week's Illustration Friday I decided to see how it would be like to do a painting digitally from start to finish.

My usual process is to do watercolors on Arches and to later fix/modify the painting a bit in Photoshop.
Here is what I did this time:

1.  Did a couple of watercolor washes on scrap Arches watercolor paper I had and scanned them all in.


2.  Made a quick thumbnail of what I wanted to paint.

3.  Drew a super-rough sketch in Photoshop based on the concept I had in my thumbnail to set the composition. This is where digital is nice. You can really play with the composition quickly.
4.  After this, the process becomes trial and error for me. I opened up the scanned watercolor washes and used the clone stamp with a basic round brush. I played with the edges using the eraser tool. There was a lot of playing around and adjusting the layer blend modes and opacity of the layers.

After a while I tightened up the drawing too.


Here is the final painting:

I'm sure there is probably a more efficient way to do this. I know there are Photoshop watercolor brushes out there but those seem to crash my computer – my computer isn't the latest and greatest in terms of processing power.

It was fun painting all digitally, the flexibility to adjust a lot of things was nice. In the end, I think I'll stick with my usual process of doing the painting first and adjusting it later in the computer. I just feel like I have more control and I can do things faster with paper and paints. But I definitely learned a whole lot from doing this exercise so I can apply the new knowledge to the next

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For this week's Illustration Friday I decided to see how it would be like to do a painting digitally from start to finish.

My usual process is to do watercolors on Arches and to later fix/modify the painting a bit in Photoshop.
Here is what I did this time:

1.  Did a couple of watercolor washes on scrap Arches watercolor paper I had and scanned them all in.


2.  Made a quick thumbnail of what I wanted to paint.

3.  Drew a super-rough sketch in Photoshop based on the concept I had in my thumbnail to set the composition. This is where digital is nice. You can really play with the composition quickly.
4.  After this, the process becomes trial and error for me. I opened up the scanned watercolor washes and used the clone stamp with a basic round brush. I played with the edges using the eraser tool. There was a lot of playing around and adjusting the layer blend modes and opacity of the layers.

After a while I tightened up the drawing too.


Here is the final painting:

I'm sure there is probably a more efficient way to do this. I know there are Photoshop watercolor brushes out there but those seem to crash my computer – my computer isn't the latest and greatest in terms of processing power.

It was fun painting all digitally, the flexibility to adjust a lot of things was nice. In the end, I think I'll stick with my usual process of doing the painting first and adjusting it later in the computer. I just feel like I have more control and I can do things faster with paper and paints. But I definitely learned a whole lot from doing this exercise so I can apply the new knowledge to the next

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Lanterns being dipped into the water during the Japanese Obon season.

For this week's illustration, I decided to experiment and try to do the entire painting in Photoshop. It was fun but it just felt a little clunky. It certainly didn't take any less time than just painting it on paper. It may have even taken longer.

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Lanterns being dipped into the water during the Japanese Obon season.

For this week's illustration, I decided to experiment and try to do the entire painting in Photoshop. It was fun but it just felt a little clunky. It certainly didn't take any less time than just painting it on paper. It may have even taken longer.

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I finally finished this illustration just as the rainy season is (hopefully) about to end here.

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I finally finished this illustration just as the rainy season is (hopefully) about to end here.

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Every artist has that "thing" that got them into art. For some people it might have been a cartoon show, for others, it could have been a particular painting.

For me it was this comic book -- "Tokimeki Tonight" by Ikeno Koi. This was the very first manga I ever bought as a child (*cough* more than 25 years ago). I remember thinking that there was nothing more beautiful than the images I saw in this comic book and I worked hard to try to draw just like that.

I've let go of most of my manga collection over the years but I'm holding on to this book -- because it's nice to see where it all began.

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Every artist has that "thing" that got them into art. For some people it might have been a cartoon show, for others, it could have been a particular painting.

For me it was this comic book -- "Tokimeki Tonight" by Ikeno Koi. This was the very first manga I ever bought as a child (*cough* more than 25 years ago). I remember thinking that there was nothing more beautiful than the images I saw in this comic book and I worked hard to try to draw just like that.

I've let go of most of my manga collection over the years but I'm holding on to this book -- because it's nice to see where it all began.

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