Illustration Contest - Pets

Welcome one and all to the next contest. Sharpen your pencils, grab some markers, or fire up your tablet. This contest is a run on the last contest centering around "man's best friend". We want to extend this contest to any kind of pet. Keep in mind that I am not limiting this to any type of literal pet or common pet. Let your imagination be the limit to what you can come up with and then break those limits. I want to see your imagination flowing outside the paper.

Entries can be rough as a sketch or final, colorized works ready to be framed and hung. Just play around with the subject matter and see what road your imagination takes you down and then challenge it.

Contest deadline: August 22nd, 2011 at midnight.

(For this contest there will be prizes awarded for community favorite and runner up of two gift cards to Dick Blick: Art Materials. They will be small cards as I'm a grad student but I like the idea of adding incentives for you to put forth your best effort. I will have details later detailing the community decision-making process we will use.)

Good luck everyone!

Dogs! - Illustration Contest

Thank you participants! Great work! Your illustrations and sketches were fun to look at. Enjoy these great dogs and leave some comments!

 
Kristi G.


So I tried sketching with a pen for my rough ideas. I hope you don't mind me sending you these along with the finished. I was pretty excited about them - I usually use a pencil and find myself using the eraser more than the side I should be using. I tried to not worry so much about getting it perfect, instead tried to capture the movement. I am more pleased with the sketches than the final. Liezl has been following Jingle around the house for the last couple of weeks with a paper and pencil in hand. She has not decided which one she wants to send yet.

(I just took a peek at the scanned pictures and they look pretty fuzzy - sorry)

Nate S.


For my picture I just compiled a bunch of sketches of different breeds of dogs that were high up on the popularity rankings and some that had unique characteristics. Mostly I just wanted to explore the world of dog lovers and see where it led me. My reason for wanting to work on dog pictures for this contest centers around a story I’m working on that centers around a little girl and her greatest wish, to have a dog. She’s young but at her tender age she’s a sort of scientist, categorizing the breeds of dogs and doing her own scientific sketches. It’s a work in progress and this activity helped push me in the right direction. I went with the pen-only approach which was harder than I thought it would be but an enjoyable challenge. Hopefully this contest was as beneficial to you as it was to me. Either way, thanks for participating with me.

Scott W.


I took some time to draw lots of reference (didn't include all of it in this selection...should've included a skeletal sketch, which was really important.) And the biggest drawing is the design I was going for. Fun contest though, lots of room to play and if I had more time, I probably would.

Also, on my personal blog, I'm posting a process post for my Paperwings podcast entry. Thanks for mentioning it on your blog and I'm excited to see how both websites benefit from these fun contests!

Quick Draw Contest - St. Patrick's Day

Hello fellow contributors. I know we have a bigger contest that is due the end of the month but I had to throw out a challenge in homage to my favorite holiday of the year, St. Patrick's day. Your entry can be a quick sketch if needs be but please submit something that has to do with the holiday, I'll leave it up to your interpretation.

Due date: Day before St. Patrick's Day, Wed. March 16th, 2011

Good luck!

Also, should you be interested in checking out my progress in the Picture Book Marathon, please check out the 26 stories I came up with...yes I was a finisher and had one day to spare. Whew! It was hard but a fun form of excercise. Please check them out and vote for your favorites.

Quick Draw - Character Relationships

Thank you for the pictures submitted. Great work. Here's the submissions I received for this quick draw contest.

Kristi G

Nate S


Mine I ended up not developing as far as I hoped to at this time. I’ve been working this month on a picture book marathon that has entailed coming up with the rough draft of a children’s book every day, on top of the finals I’m trying to keep up with. I appreciate the work you guys put into these contests so I knew I had to at least give you a real rough draft of my thought process. The story can be found on my blog and centers around two brothers, a big box of crayons, and a lot of imagination.

Scott W


I'm still playing around with the vegan twins. I like the personality of peace-loving, eccentric, etc. that they bring to my mine. I actually pitched animating something based on them at my school (but my mentor felt it was too complex). I would have a clearer, more polished sketch but I ran out of time...It'll come soon, no worries. So the sketch that I'm leaning most toward is the bottom left: one twin is drawn to the top secret box while the other pulls her away : The story I'm exploring of these two peace-loving-vegans who are incredibly skilled and talented, but refuse to be secret agents.

Also I wanted to share a comment that Scott sent me, I found it helpful (thanks Scott):

“Hey Nate, so I thought I'd share this too since this contest was a quick draw. I was in an online meeting and not feeling too positive, so I started sketching. I first made an interesting scribble shape and then started shaping a character out of that. I was only half concentrating in the drawing, so I was quite surprised with the quality of the character and rendering. It just reemphasized that sometimes we try too hard when we should really keep things loose and experiment.”

Just so everyone knows, I'm finishing up tallying all the results from the votes for everyone's nominations. I'll have them up this week.

Christmas Illustration - Story Contest

Grab those pens and pencils because we've got our second to last contest of the year and this one's a quick draw contest. There will be little time for developing this entry completely but I'm more just challenging you to submit something in the small time frame, for an illustration it can be a quick sketch, some ink, or even throw some color on if you get the chance. A story could just consist of the beats of the story or the general idea and story arc. For this contest we will aim it towards the Christmas holiday.

Your mission is to come up with an illustration and/or story that centers around Christmas. The plausible idea I'm throwing out there to offer as a challenge if you want to push yourself further is Christmas in a place that you wouldn't normally picture as a Christmas setting. Submit a general storyline centered on the theme or a quick sketch on the same theme. If you're going to do an illustration I have a second additional challenge to throw into the challenge: your illustration needs to demonstrate a sense of depth. I think this will push us all a little further. I'm excited to see what comes out of it.

You can do it. Put a little thought into this one and then quickly sketch out your idea and submit it before you let your eyes burst from fretting over all the errors and details. Just get something in for this one. Have fun with it; I dare you.

Email me your submission by: Monday, December 13th, 2010 at 7 AM.

Illustration Contest: Book Cover Design

Thank you to everyone who made submissions to this week's illustration contest. We had some great drawings showing potential covers for future book ideas. Great job everyone; keep up the great work!

Kristi G. (Top 3) So I am going to focus on working on the story I had a while ago with the play date of boy and girl siblings.  I am changing it up a little bit.  I needed to simplify it to make it not so overwhelming.  I am going to have just two characters.  I am still going to contrast their likes, resulting in frustration, but ultimately they will learn how similar they really are and have a fun time doing it.  My first cover idea was both of them posed back to back looking frustrated, but I felt that was a little negative.  My favorite (and the one I put more time in) is the one with both of them side to side happy to be who they are and even happier to be with their friend (even though they are different).  Something I need to change with this picture that I am noticing now is that they are too far apart.  I was worried that this one was a little posed and stiff, so I thought about them on a swing (something they will be doing in the book).  I like the idea, and obviously need to put more time on proportions and angles.  I would like the title (which I am still not sure about) to be in block letters across the top.  –Kristi

Nate S. (3 previous) I wanted to explore different layouts for the cover of the book I’m writing/illustrating for my daughter. It centers on the tooth fairy, the one from my last contest entry. I used some ideas from the covers’ of books that we like right now to rough out some general ideas. Let me know what you guys think. -Nate

Scott W. (2 above) I have one that actually would be near the climax...one with the wild idea of having them both in the bubble jar....and the last of a close up with the entire world rendering in the background.



I'd love to know what you think! -Scott

Illustration Contest: Design Your Book Cover

Everyone did a great job for the last contest. It took me a while to decide where to go next for this next week’s contest. I’ve been debating between moving along with book illustration or continuing loosely related subjects chosen at random ‘whim’. Sorry for the delay but I’ve decided to give a very different challenge for this next contest.


Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with a cover design for the book you’re interested in completing. You could reference other books you love to figure out a composition you enjoy but for this week’s contest I’m looking for a book cover design. You could submit up to three designs, rough submissions, and I’ll post them for others to comment on. That way we can find out from the community what is a preferred cover and for a future contest you’ll come up with a more polished version. Good luck; you have until:

Deadline: Midnight, Saturday, October 9th, 2010.

Illustration Contest: Character Design

Great work everyone in the last contest. It's fun for me to see how everyone is progressing individually. Keep up the hard work. For this next quick draw contest we're going to center it around developing characters for a story. (Thank you Scott for the idea.) In this contest you're to come up with a character, could be for a story, and to work on developing who they are or how they look. Possible interpretations of the contest could include: various designs in appearance, different poses to explore personality, different clothes or coverings, or whatever else you come up with, just keep it centered on a character.

I'm excited to see what you come up with, so please start working. Our deadline is Saturday, September 18th, midnight. Good luck and happy drawing.

Illustration Contest: Theme/Background

Alright everyone. The next contest is centered on creating a theme for a book, which can be interpreted however you wish. It could mean that your backgrounds have a certain stylized appearance or that you use words as part of each image sewn into the image itself. Use your imagination. You've got two weeks from today; get going.

Submissions due: September 2nd, Midnight

Illustration Contest: Backyard Neighbor

Friends we've got another challenge for you, a contest inspired by your backyard (or favorite park if you don't have a backyard). The contest is to come up with a mythical character or illustration of who visits your backyard when you're not there. Who plays on the swings while you're eating lunch? Who makes the lawn into a racetrack?

This contest in my mind was centered around mythical creatures but it could be animals too; you decide. Just come up with something fun and the challenge is to put it together in a fun way. Good luck everyone! Leave a comment with any questions or thoughts.

Deadline: August 11th at Midnight

Quick Draw Ideas

This blog is slowly transforming with time and I'm learning to readjust along side. I really like the concept of working towards printing a tangible book around the end of this year and the concepts are more going to stand as benchmarks as we work towards that goal; showing our progress along the way. Are you guys okay with that? All in favor say Ay!

In light of that slight variation that has really already started creeping in I wanted to morph the random contests from before into a weekly quick draw contest where a shorter period of time was given for a quick drawing of an idea/illustration. We're talking like a week or two weeks per time period. What do you think about that idea? These pictures would be more rough and more centered on content and presentation than the depths to which you develop them. We don't want pieces that will hang in the Louve but pictures to explore composition and concepts. Marksmanship can reach your own prefered level. Let me know what you think.