It's not often that I feel compelled to do color work on my black and white drawings, but something about Dreamosaurs just called for some color play. The original idea was to do a sepia tone over the full image just to add another layer of value, but once I got going on it I felt like a deep dreamy blue made more sense. Photoshop makes it so easy to play with variations and layers of value. The 'replace color' option is invaluable for me during this process, as I can drag the slider bars and see different palette options in real time without doing any permanent damage to the original.
All that said, I still have the itch to do a sepia version of some of my other black and whites. In so many words, I'd like to push my illustrations a little further without making a jarring switch to full-color. Monochrome is just too beautiful to me!
Prints of these are available at my Etsy Art shop
As an aside and in the interest of scary children's media, I have to repost a quote by Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) that my good friend and illustrator Aja Wells shared...
"...from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustration as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things." - Maurice Sendak
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