Finding the Star

This past few months has been extremely busy as I started a new job as Assistant Professor of Art History and Studio Art at LaGuardia Community College in NYC and I moved into my second new apartment in the course of 11 months.  My new job has been wonderful; it's so great to teach both of the fields in which I earned my Bachelor's (my M.A. and Ph.D. are only in art history). It was tough but lots of fun and I look forward to getting more experience under my belt.

But as a result, many projects, including my dummy, momentarily had to be put on the back burner. It's time to remedy that situation.

My first color test for my dummy of Lore and the Little Star went through many sketches and variations before I settled on this current spread.  The first rendition, made about a year ago, looked like this:

I thought it was important to have a relatively close shot of my heroine early on in the dummy, so, she had to get bigger.  Secondly, the star needed to change in two ways.  I did not want it to have the shape of a geometric star, and I did not want the star to put out that much light. Since it was the littlest star in the sky, I wanted its light to be gentler and more magical.  Below is the new two-page spread.

"Lore Finds the Star" (two-page spread" for the dummy, Lore and the Little Star, written and illustrated by Jessica Boehman. Colored pencil, pencil, and gouache.  Please do not reproduce without permission.