Another submission for the Tomie dePaola Award

Yesterday, I submitted another illustration for the Tomie dePaola Award. This is my third year participating — I blogged about the 2013 contest here, and I was a semi-finalist for my 2014 submission, which you can see here.

The assignment was to "illustrate a moment from the following passage from Philip Pullman’s version of “Little Red Riding Hood” from FAIRY TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM (Viking, 2012)." (You can read the full prompt at SCBWI.org)

I chose this passage:
"When Little Red Riding Hood had only been walking a few minutes, a wolf came up to her. She didn’t know what a wicked animal he was, so she wasn’t afraid of him."

Below is my digital collage...

Transferring my collage onto wood

The collage I'd made for this month's MATS Bootcamp really lent itself to a burnt wood look, so I bought a few rounds of wood and a wood-burning tool at my local art store.

Though I really loved sketching with the wood burner, I just couldn't get an even burn for large flat areas. So I found this great Photoshop tutorial, made some additional tweaks, and submitted this final piece:

Creating my own scene for MATS Bootcamp

In Lilla Rogers' MATS Bootcamp course, our main assignment this month is to paint a picturesque scene on a round wooden surface.

I started my mini assignment by sketching scenic plates that Lilla had provided (you can see one of them here). I then moved on to create my own scene, using collage. But I decided to eliminate the texture and work toward more of a cinematic, dark effect.

This was my final layout. Now to transfer it on wood....