My New Venture...

I received a Wacom Bamboo for Christmas, as recommended by the lovely Lil, after years of wishing I had one. And boy is it gooood. No more glitchy-mouse moments, as my cursor decides to unexpectedly spring from one corner of the screen to the other, usually in a moment of carefully-executed detail whilst working in Photoshop. Surprisingly, I adjusted to my graphics tablet quite quickly (thankfully a lot quicker than I adjusted to knitting needles over the Christmas holidays, but the less said about that the better!) and over the weekend decided to give it a proper run... like an adopted greyhound, only without all the legs and raincoat.

I've been writing a few rhyming children's stories lately, so thought I'd do a bit of concept art for my latest called... well, actually, it hasn't got a title yet, but it goes a little like this:

"The Zooblie-Doos and the Zooblie-Dees
Lived at the top of the Zooblie Tree,
In Zooblie Wood
On Zooblie Hill
Zooblie ever after until,
One stormy night
When everything changed
And the Zooblie's home was all rearranged.
But before I recount
The whens and the whos
You must first learn the difference
Between a Dee and a Doo..."

© Louise Pigott/Lou Peajeux

And in my head I saw something a little like this:

A little bit of work to do yet - not sure if I like it completely (a bit too Avatar-ish?!) but it's quite nice to experiment and paint digitally! Also, if it's going to be in a book, I will need to change the central placement of the Zooblie Tree, else it'll get lost in the page fold. Usually I do my night-time scenes with coloured pencil, and I end up getting pencil dust alllll up my arm, pencil sharpenings alllll over the carpet and big fat calluses on my fingers, so this has been rather nice to do. Feedback and constructive criticism welcome!