Sleeping Bear

Here's a piece that seems to be quite popular. Originally produced to accompany a story in Baby Hampshire (a magazine for new parents in the Hampshire region of the UK), it's surprisingly effective given the time constraints I faced.

My colouring technique is normally pretty time consuming. It involves tracing every component of the picture using paths and then filling each with layers of textures and colour. It can take an age to get anywhere with a really complex picture, especially as I don't use a graphics tablet or pen.

Does a bear sleep in the woods?

So sometimes its more effective to dedicate extra time to producing really detailed pencils to work from, that way you can speed up the modelling and shading phases by letting the tones of the drawing show through.

Another way, of course, is to build a stockpile of components that you can duplicate and re-use. In this case the long grass and the flowers are variations on two or three assets. After so much hard work though, it can sometimes feel like cheating.

But really I think its the colours that make it. I rarely think to use pinks and purples, but here they work really well with the abundance of green - and I particularly like the spatters of vivid yellow and blue in the canopy.

The bear's cute, too.