Grumpy Goat

Hi everyone, hope you had a great week.

And I have awesome news for you! My new book “Grumpy Goat” is coming out next month and will be available in stores January 12.

“Publishers Weekly” wrote a review on it. You can check it out here. 

A little behind the scenes: A few years ago I made a drawing of a goat with a dandelion as an illustration for a book in “the Series of Unfortunate Events”. It was just a short moment, but I always felt there is more story to it. I kept thinking about it and it eventually became the “Grumpy Goat”.

All of the illustrations are made with oil on paper. Hope you like reading it.

Take care and happy holidays!

A Lump of Coal

I've added a print from "A Lump of Coal" to the shop just for the Holidays. BrettHelquistArt

I've added a few more prints to the store. These are more from "the Bad Beginning" special edition.
Check them out. BrettHelquistArt. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Great News! I've opened an Etsy shop to sell prints. To start I've made a print of the above image made for a special edition of "The Bad Beginning" by Lemony Snicket. It is a color version of the  B&W frontispiece from the original edition of "The Bad Beginning" I'll be adding more choices in the near future. Here's a link to the shop. BrettHelquistArt

I've been very busy lately, sorry I haven't posted anything new for a while. Here's a not quite finished piece from a new picture book I'm working on.

WEEKLY SKETCHES

I have finished the study that I started in the previous posts.  After I finish the acrylic underpainting I cover it with a very thin coat of acrylic matte medium. I finish with oils using a dry brush technique,
If you look carefully you can see where the underpainting is showing through.

WEEKLY SKETCHES

As I promised in last weeks post, I have taken this sketch further. After finishing the drawing I stretch the paper on stretcher bars. My first step in painting is to do an underpainting with acrylic washes. This helps me quickly lay in my base colors. At this stage my goal is to just work out the basic color and value composition. As you can see the colors are a little muddy, I'm not try to get the finished color just a good base on which to build. I use glazes to help harmonize the color. For example, on the hair I first laid down the orange color. I then used the blue from the shirt plus the green from the back ground to glaze some of the darker areas. You can also see where I used the background color in the shadow areas of the shirt. This technique is great for harmonizing colors. Next I will start refining and finishing with oil paint. I'll show you the results next week.