On Monday, May 9th I’m one of the speakers from 3:00 to 5:45 for the International Reading Association Teachers’ Choices program along with authors Jon Scieszka, and Elizabeth Partridge. The overall topic is Integrating Technology and Reading, so I’ll discuss how I use digital tools to design and illustrate my picture books. These notes and links are for the attendees as well as anyone else who is interested.
Drawing as Fast as Lightning
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| ...as fresh as a daisy |
Why I use digital tools.
The premise of Crazy Like a Fox is to illustrate the comparison used in the simile. When Rufus the fox is sleeping like a log, he turns into a log.
The art in The Shocking Truth about Energy serves to bring dry facts such as “Energy can change into different forms” to life. For example, LIGHT from the Sun is changed by a tree into wood, which is a FUEL that can be burned, thus changing the energy into HEAT (as shown in an illustration on page 4–5 of the book.)
Analogy: a typewriter is to a word processor as traditional art media is to digital illustration.
My 4 Stages of Technology Adoption:
I hate it.
That’s interesting.
Let me try that.
I can’t live without it!
Would Aaron Copland have used GarageBand?
Early digital art to vector and painting software.
My set-up, hardware and software. Mac Tower; NEC LCD monitor; Wacom tablet; Epson scanner; Sony camera; Epson printer; Photoshop; Illustrator; InDesign.
The basics of brushes, color, and layers in Photoshop. Incorporating traditional media.
From sketch to final art.
Design and layout of pages in InDesign.
The good news and bad news of creating artwork digitally.
Finding image reference:
Historical images from the Library of Congress American Memory collection.
Clipart ETC: Over 60,000 free antique engravings for students and teachers.
Tag Galaxy: A gorgeous animated search of Flickr images.
My blog post about Tag Galaxy.
Sneak peek of my next book, which is ALMOST finished. : )
Here’s a tip about how to get circular images into an iPad Keynote presentation:
Save round or otherwise irregular image with a transparent background in the PNG format.
Email it to yourself.
Email it to yourself.
Open email on iPad, select and Save Image.
Image will appear in Photo app on Camera Roll.
Select image, then Copy.
Paste it into the iPad Keynote app and transparency will be maintained (yay!)
Select image, then Copy.
Paste it into the iPad Keynote app and transparency will be maintained (yay!)
