(I’m trying something different. Plopping the new stuff at the top of the revised post, scroll down to see the earlier stages!)
Finished.
Worked on the background, started the painting of the female figure. Checked the text for hair color, all I found was “dark” but I noticed that later she lets her hair down from the “tight bun” so I went back in and changed the drawing of her hair. Also noticed her fedora is brown so I made her suit brown as well, switching the blue to the male. Made the window look more glass-like and painted the moon cakes in the window.
Inks on the female character, cleaned up the inks on the male character, flats on the foreground elements.
The second act, or chapter, of the book takes place in the late forties.
I spent a lot more time refining the sketch for this one since the background was rather complex so my next stage is a combination of beginning the colors and refining the line work.
Here’s the initial sketch for the third illustration of Act One;
Here’s the finished line work and the wood texture of an attic laid in;
Finished;
Second illustration, here’s the sketch, which you’ve seen before;
Here’s the finished line work with corrected perspective, etc.
Here’s the color flats, that’s a comic book coloring term indicating that the colors are laid in flatly waiting for modeling and final color choices.
Here the modeling has been started, the face is mostly done and shading has been laid into the rest of the flesh although it needs to be refined.
Now with the modeling completed and the line work colored, it’s finished.
I told you I’d keep you updated on this book illustration project. Well, after a day lost to no power courtesy of an Indiana lightning storm (15 hours with no power) and various other more mundane delays I was able to get back to it.
The Shelby Cobra won’t be gray in the final, I need to ask the client what color it should be.
And now I know it’s blue!
And now the background is almost finished. Lots of building details dealt with today but still more to do before I move on to the figure.
Finished line work and starting color on the female figure, still lots to do on this one to get the look I’m after.
I decided I needed to knock back the building behind the car a bit so I went in with the pastel tool in Painter to mute the colors a little and add some texture. I also ran a blur on the more colorful buildings on the left for the same reason. I’m going to call this one finished.
I’m currently (when I posted this, not specifically when you may be reading this) working on a book illustration project. Here are a few of the line drawings.
I’ll keep you updated on the various stages of this project.
See the previous post to explain the stamp.
For the past few years I’ve been creating a calendar to send to some of my clients, family and friends. The clients get the version pictured below which is shamelessly self-promoting, including banner ads at the bottom of each month showing examples of the various work I do. (The family version has no ad banners but lists all the family birthdays, anniversaries, etc.) Knowing what I like in a calendar I designed this for maximum note taking space in each day block. It is printed on 12″ x 18″ sheets of 80 lb. white stock, printed, hole-punched, coil-bound and fitted with an aluminum bar hanger, personally bent to shape by yours truly. Very much hand-made from start to finish.
While I’m on the subject of calendars here are photos of a project I did this year, creating fun caricatures of fork-lift trucks for NMC, Nebraska Machinery Corporation.
This project was an education, I chose to caricature Ray Park alongside his highest profile movie role for this convention. I got to learn a lot more about digital painting in Corel Painter IX, plus I had never used any type in the Painter program. Up until this effort I’d been using the acrylic option but after fully rendering the figures in digital acrylic the right figure felt thin, lacking in solidity. So I painted over it using the oil paint option and that worked so much better! Painter has the ability to mimic real world art materials to the point where you can paint impasto with a palette knife! I’ll post the reference photo of the guy below.
In amongst the summer live bookings I had some very nice studio jobs. Here’s two of them;
This was done for RN Specialties, a firm that works for the nursing profession.
This was done in Illustrator using the calligraphy brush tool and the Wacom tablet and pen.
This one was a longer term project requiring a lot of consultations between me and the client and eventually the offices of the Mayor and Governor! (Not me, the client dealt with the politicians!) For their party invitation I gave them sketches of three different football oriented scenes, scrimmage line, tail-gating and stadium seating and three variations on printing folds. They chose the stadium seating and the gatefold design. This is the art for the outside of the invitation;
That’s the Mayor of Indianapolis on the left and the Governor of Indiana on the right up top looking disapproving.
It split right down the middle to open to this art;
These are only the illustrations, the outside had no type but the inside had all the party information placed in the gray wall area. I laid it all out and their in-house designer tweaked it with their own typeface choices. If they send me examples of the actual printed pieces I’ll post them later.
I used Corel Painter IX for this project. I like it’s ability to mimic real world art materials like pen and ink and marker coloring. I can get a smoother “ink” line using Painter than I can using Photoshop, which is the program I used before becoming comfortable with Painter.