Illustration Friday: Tension

This week's illustration Friday topic is TENSION. Here's an excerpt from one of my upcoming books, Paolo's Magic (written by Glenda Oris and published by Lampara Books). This book excited me for it was my first take on depicting a manuscript using anthropomorphic characters which was never mentioned by the publisher or writer. Glad to know they were keen on it as well after i submitted the sketches.

I don't really know why I chose hounds for my characters, but I enjoy how they played out as my main actors. My process involved decisions on rabbits (but was awkward in the haircut scenes for their ears might be snipped off!), hedgehogs (but being hairy IS their thing!) and these dogs. Due to the wide array of canines, I chose one of my favorites for the supporting character, a fox for Regor the barber (who later disguises himself as a magician, justifying how sly foxes are).

Here is the cover of the book:

  Main text is in Filipino, with english parallel text.

Coming this 2013 :)

My New Book and Illustration Friday: Liquid

Back cover

Front cover

Presenting one of my new books for this year, My Daddy! My One and Only! to be published by Lampara Books (Manila).

Incidentally, the working period of this book fell under my own father's last few months on planet earth. Aside from the books I wrote, this may have been the only personal one since it dealt a lot with looking back at me and my dad's moments together when I was a child.

The cover of this book shows a lot of how imagination played a great deal in our bonding moments. Though the writer, Zarah Gagatiga (http://lovealibrarian.blogspot.com) never mentioned about pirates, the back cover makes sense of it all.

Though I grew up in the 80's and early 90's, my dad, who under Tejido tradition was called Pop was not the stereotypical father. He acted more like a brother and friend, the type who you could splash water with in pools and he'd make it into a silly game.

A week after I drew this pool scene we bought our daughter an adult-sized portable pool that is now taking up the garage space.

My one and only Pop, Poch Tejido will be missed, but his happy memories shall live on.


 

 

Happy Mother's Day (and illustration Friday)!

This Week's Illustration Friday theme is "Tribute", hence a tribute to moms for mothers' day.

This illustration is another sneak peek of one of my upcoming books this year, "My Daddy! My One and Only!" written by Zarah Gagatiga (http://lovealibrarian.blogspot.com). 

Going Home

Here's a sneak peek at my upcoming picture book written by librarian Zarah Gagatiga (http://lovealibrarian.blogspot.com) . It's my first time partnering with her as an author and I am super glad I got to play around with the characters and the much-loved free space made possible by her light text content. A dilemma I face in my book design process is the amount of text in a page, considering that most of our country's books are bilingual (Filipino and English) for marketability reasons.

It was coincidental that this week we visited a new school location for our daughter and we kinda fell in love with the homey little play-school we ended up in. If there is one character in this image that i can relate to, is the two-tone dog waiting for a long time. I remember waiting for so long for my parents to pick me up in kindergarten.  :)

Illustration friday: Farewell

Today's illustration friday topic is farewell. "Walking backwards" is one of the pages of my whimsical illustration set that aided my discovery of this illo style. Visualizing one of my unpublished stories about a kid doing everything backwards, we see here how she goes to the school bus. I remember trying this when i was young, but only for indoor / household activities which was part of the secret things you do as a kid to discover how things work.

It has been a rough 2 weeks for me and also why i missed last week's entry. Having my father in the hospital and in critical condition is not very contributory to creative output. yet ive managed to slip in an A5 sketchpad to his ward to make up for lost time, and finished thumbnail studies for my halloween book. It was the worst place to work in having your only art mentor in a bed beside you , but that's life. I think drawing has kept me sane depite the inevitable truth (coincidentally related to this week's topic) coming our way soon. Anyway, life goes on.  

My new T-rex figure

As promised, I am sharing my latest toy acquisition, a Schleich Tyrannosaurus, beautifully painted and detailed, with its articulated jaw which is a first in this line of figurines (http://www.schleich-s.com).

Happy to have this cheer me up especially in this period when my Father's in the hospital battling his cancer. Though i still force myself to illustrate while i am there, work has not been very easy for the past week. Dino toys were our (me and my dad's) steadily growing collection, and we already had a decent set of carnivores and herbivores from the Carnegie collection in the 90's. We kinda stopped doing that when i grew up, and just got back into it last week when i saw how Schleich is doing an awesome job with this series. It made my dad happy when i brought him this carnosaur in the hospital today.  

Illustration Friday: WILD

Part of the previous entry's try-out requirements was this set of  character studies on a pet T-rex. Almost fell in love with how adorable this bi-ped would look like mimicking a pet dog, and doing hip-hop / breakdance moves :)

This also reminds me of my most recent toy acquisition which i will post next time, it's safely in my bedside right now. This German toy line Schleichen, really did it this year, with its carnivores produced with movable jaws.