Roxie's studio is in a 1930's art deco building in Long Island City, just across the East River from her home in the Murray Hill neighborhood in New York City. It was originally Helena Rubenstein's makeup factory,
and now about three dozen artists have their studios in the building.
View from the roof of my building - to the right (north) is the
Queensborough (59th Street) Bridge.
That's the Empire State Building on the far left,
overlapped by the United Nations. Then the Chrysler Building is
to the right of them. The building with the angled roof is Citicorp.
This is the area where I create my books (cleaned it up for the photos!) -
write, do the illustrations. For gallery exhibitions,
I also work on watercolors and art for prints here.
I have the only skylight in the building -
it's great for bright even light.
After making a book dummy (a B&W mock-up of the book with each page
sketched in) and getting an okay from my editor,
I draw the illustrations loosely in pencil on plain paper. At that stage,
everything in the composition is carefully worked out.
I put the sketch under a sheet of good Strathmore paper on a light table,
and work in pencil on the final piece of paper. Next,
I draw the entire piece of art in ink (in this photo).
After that I paint in the shadows (usually blue-green and lavender),
and the last step, the most fun, is painting in all the final colors.
Here's my art library, reading, and sometimes resting, area....
Paintings in oil are done in the part of the studio
with large north light windows.
Sometimes I use an easel, and other times work against the wall.
The office area and storage (with painting racks).
All work on this site Copyright 2012 Roxie Munro. All rights reserved.
