Illustrating Cathy's Animal Garden -Enter at Your Own Risk
Working on Cathy's Animal Garden - Enter at Your Own Risk was a great project, as my favorite thing to paint is animals (though I really enjoy the challenge of painting people, too). The story takes place in a garden full of "animals" -- that is, plants with animal names. As Henry and Andy search through the garden for a lost baseball, they "see" all kinds of animals, including tigers and snakes -- even elephants! Besides the imaginary animals, I also painted many small animals that you could find in a garden. (See the bottom of the page for a list of animals.) After carefully considering my sketches, I decided the best medium to use would be oils -- I would have time to blend the shadows and colors, and oils are very forgiving (I could go over them again easily if I made a mistake or needed to change something). Another consideration was all of the detailed flowers involved; this animal garden was, after all, a flower garden, and I wanted to make it as bright and as colorful as a flower garden might be. By using oils, I could paint the flowers in layers on top of a leafy green background, rather than have to work around the flowers or use
masking fluid.
The paints I used were from Studio Products, recommended to me by a friend on an email loop, and they are wonderful paints. The colors are so vibrant, and the texture so smooth. I enjoyed working with the oils on paper so much through this project, that I painted the illustrations for As I Watch in a similar manner. Cathy's Animal Garden - Enter at Your Own Risk became available in June 2010, and how neat it was to see the paintings in print!
Cathy's Animal Garden - Enter at Your Own Risk is full of animals! Here's what you can look for on the pages: Page 3: a dragonfly, an inch worm, a lizard, a spider Pages 4-5: a dragonfly, a spider, a praying mantis Pages 6-7: a dragonfly, a monkey, a leopard (tail), 5 tigers, an ant Page 8-9: a dragonfly, a butterfly, 2 monkeys (one just shows its tail), a leopard (tail), a dragon, a snake, an inchworm Page 10: a dragonfily, 6 leopards (tails), 7 monkeys (tails), 5 foxes (tails) Page 11: a dragonfly Page 12-13: a dragonfly, an elephant Page 14-15: a dragonfly, 2 snakes, 9 spiders Pages 16-17: a dragonfly, a snail, 3 ladybugs Pages 18-19: a dragonfly, a chipmunk, 2 robins, a worm, a snail Page 20: a dragonfly Page 21: a dragonfly Pages 22-23: a dragonfly, 5 butterflies, a turtle, a rabbit, a squirrel, a robin, 2 beetles Pages 24-25: a dragonfly Pages 26-27: a dragonfly, a spider, an inch worm Page 32: a dragonfly, 3 monkeys (tails), a fox (tail), and an elephant
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