Elora's wow words

In Elora's fifth grade class this last year, they had a fun, ongoing assignment that was perfect for her. Every few weeks, they would get a W.O.W. word, or "Word of the week". They were given a definition and then had to create a drawing to go with the word, which was then displayed in the hallway until the next one.
They were given about a week to work on each one; some kids got done in one day, and Elora's teacher was nice enough to let her take as long as she wanted to finish hers...which was often at least two weeks. But she came up with some awesome pictures!
I've said it before, Elora already draws better than I could by ninth grade, and she is very creative. So I thought I'd post her "wow words" here for you to check out. Remember you can click on them to make it bigger.

She looked at the movie cover for "Aladdin" for clothing ideas on this one.

The sheriff is holding a small star badge and saying it's immaculate. Everyone in her class loved the vulture poop. Haha.She looked up photo references for the bird and the tumbleweed, so she could draw them correctly.

 For this one, she had me find a picture of the palace guards in England, to see how tall their hats are. The funniest part is the portrait on the wall, where the frame is full of a hat and eyes, instead of the face, Hilarious.

For this one, Elora knew she wanted to draw a goat, but was looking for an idea that would work. I showed her a Youtube video of a goat in a palm tree, and that's what she drew! She cut out some brown paper for the tree, and again found photo references for the goat and tree to draw them right.

I think the name of this class is funny. She loosely based the chef on the Sweedish chef from the Muppets.

I like how she made the different kinds of light in this one. She was trying hard to show colors as well as how dark it was in the room, not an easy feat. The window and stars turned out great!

I hope Elora gets to do more projects like this next year!

How to go down the giant slide: by River.

Climb the steps carefully; you don't want to fall.

 Make sure you have a good grip before you sit down!

Put your legs out straight. This is going to be fun!

Um, maybe lay your whole body down. It's kind of high...

Oh no, you've let go. Now you have to go all the way down.

 Ride down in terror for two seconds.

Yay! Lets do it again!

Flower girl

This drawing is called, "Flower Girl".
After the drawing of Joshua, I was tired of pencils and wanted to work with a different medium. So it is drawn with markers on 11x14 size paper. The picture is based on a couple of photos I took of River last fall; I made her hair longer to better reflect how she looks now.
This took a long time, mostly because I kept delaying drawing the figure because I was afraid of messing it up! My favorite parts are in the flowers, which turned out pretty great. The big flower that draws all the attention does have some issues, but I think it's overshadowed by the fun shapes and designs around it.


On the figure of the girl, I have some issues I don't like. For instance, I wish I'd chosen a different color to do the darkest shadows on her face; it seemed good at first, but it doesn't' quite blend with the other face colors very well. I think I need a wider variety of skin tones, but that's beside the point.
 I also really don't like her right arm (on the left side of the drawing). In the photo reference it was completely cut off, and I wish I'd have found a good reference of an arm instead of just drawing it freehand. Part of the problem is that I decided to make the arm wider after I'd already started coloring it, so there's a weird line that I can't get rid of through the center. Oh well.

Here are some work in progress photos. It's always interesting to see how the different lighting or the camera changes the color of the picture. I really tried to make it look accurate in the final finished photo; not so  much on these ones.

Originaly, I wasn't going to have any black outlining, because I wanted it to look more like a painting. But in the end, some elements needed to be more defined, and the pen really helped with that, most particularly on the flowers that cross in front of the overalls.

All in all, I really think it turned out well. What do you think?

Sunbather

So, I did some personal work while I've been waiting for all the people who want portraits to actually give  me a photo. This drawing of Joshua is called "Sunbather" and is 11x14", drawn with Prismacolor pencil on tan paper. It was drawn from a compilation of three or four photos (Two of Josh, others of the curtains.)
 I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but this was a lot more detailed, and time intensive than the basic portraits I've been doing as commissions. I'd say it took about two months to do...of course I don't have time to work on it every day!
I liked the photo because of Josh's expression, and the way the light was shining on him.

I took some progress shots while I was working on it. I love the brightness of the first sleeve! It looks like its glowing.:

I also took a few detail shots to show some of my favorite parts. Like I think the fingers turned out pretty good (click to see a larger version).

 I liked the eyelashes and freckles too! Although this photo was taken before it was completely finished, so the cheeks are darker in the final version. I kinda wish I'd gone back in and darkened the freckles more after the cheeks were finished, so you could notice them more.

It was hard to get the color exactly right in any of these photos, but it's pretty close. Especially because of my camera's issue with blowing out orange sometimes.
So, what do you think?