Sleepy day but with no sleep at all

I am recently illustrating a children's book with nursery rhymes so I don't know how much time I'll have left for personal work. I will surely make all Illustration Friday pictures but to keep my blog more busy and you more interested I think I will show photos of how progress is going :)

So let's start with today:

I have changed my cat's bed's place so now it's next to a window right beside my desk. The cat likes it so I can watch her sleep almost all the time now. What makes me sleepy too =o=

Yesterday I have prepared outlines for three illustrations to one of the stories. It's about a little girl that makes tricks to her family.

First of all I have used tape to stick the paper to a board. Then I have "painted" it with water. In that way no matter how much water you use later the paper won't get wavy.

 

But first you have to let this water layer dry completely. It's best to leave it for the rest of the day.

 Because I couldn't work on that illustration for a moment I've started another one - this one is smaller and won't have a background so there was no need to soak it with water first. I have used masking fluid to cover places where I definitely want white or places that shouldn't get brownish while painting fur.

 Then goes the painting process. My cat enjoys walking across wet paintings, licking paint and drinking water from a water jar... And if the level of water is too low and she can't reach it then she just puts her head inside and stares through the glass ;P

 Finished illustration :) It will be on the 1st page of the book. Cute beginning.

And then the sun came to my window and I felt like sleeping on my desk :D But I just glued the 3rd illustration to another big desk and soaked it. So for tomorrow I will have them both ready for painting. The beginning process of such big illustrations is rather slow: I make several overall layers of paint waiting between each of them to dry (so I won't get nasty stains). It takes a lot of time and it doesn't even feel like PAINTING. But I can work on one when the other one is drying. And I have more sketches and outlines to prepare too :)

Busy busy me, oh how much I like it ^^

A.