Luciana Navarro Powell loves to draw. She has been a professional illustrator for over 14 years, providing, rich, vibrant and playful illustrations to clients such as Scholastic, Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, Hasbro Toys, Crocodile Creek, National Geographic School Publishing, Random House and Chronicle Books.
One of her latest ventures is an iPad app, Goodnight Safari, for Polk Street Press. In it, children can interact with adorable safari animals as they prepare for bedtime. Preview the app here . You can purchase the app here.
Luciana’s My Dad is the Best Playground, Random House, will release in May 2012. Originally from Brazil, Luciana now calls San Diego her home.
What percentage of your illustration process relies on technology? I would say 50%, because I still sketch using pencil and paper, and sketching is where all the concepting takes place. Once I am happy with the sketches I scan them and build on top of it.
What applications do you use? Photoshop, I used to use Illustrator to build up the shapes, but now I do it all in Photoshop.
What digital tool would you never want to do without? My Wacom tablet and pen, really can’t do it without it!
What is your favorite aspect of using technology in illustration? I have used traditional media in the past, mostly watercolor and acrylics, but I was really taken by digital media once I started to experiment with texture - I scan leaves, petals, fabric, or photograph cement cracks, wood, earth, and incorporate it all in my illustrations mixing them with shapes and colors. I also use a lot of customized Photoshop brushes, and create my own brushes too, I found out it makes a huge difference in making the art look organic and not overly “digital”. I love the broad possibilities of experimentation without having to re-paint anything, and love the little accidents or unplanned results that I get from the process. The difficulty is learning when to stop, you have to be disciplined or you can end up working in one single piece forever. But that is also something you learn with time.
What projects in the children’s market are you currently working on and how do you plan to incorporate technology? Right now I am working on final art for the first book I wrote! It will be out in May 2012, by Random House. It is in a slightly different style than previous works and I am having a lot of fun with it: I paint washes of real watercolor in real paper, then scan it and use it in a sort of digital collage. It has a fluid look, it allows happy accidents, but with all the advantages of the digital media. I am also on sketching phase for a series of books for Chronicle, and for those I will incorporate a lot of photographed texture like leather, plastic sheets, textured paper. I am also working on a potential eBook for iPad, and the plan for that is to scan real things like leaves, grass, fur, wood. Very busy, lots of fun!
