I'm doing some illustrations for Cambridge University Press in Madrid.
The illustration below is one a of a group going into a book called Tasty Tales which is part of the discovery readers range aimed at teenagers who are learning English.
I thought it would be interesting if I showed something of my process for an illustration like this.
It all started with a nice, fairly specific artwork brief and a proof of the text layout for each of the illustrations. I went back with a couple of rough pencil sketches to show different approaches for the illustration.
The design team and the author decided which option they would like to progress with and I produced a tighter pencil at 150% of the final dimensions.
After comments on the tightened pencil - I blocked in the rough colours I intended on using and started getting the forms defined... I tried to iron out anything that seemed obviously wrong at this point - and I also made the minor adjustments that had been asked for.
When I was happy I'd got the basics roughed in - I turned the whole document into blue-scale and printed it out.
I then did a quick bit of pencilling over the top of the blue - lightly picked out the things I did't want to miss or that I thought still needed a bit of defining - then I inked the sucker in.
I scanned my inks back in and used the channel mixer to remove ALL the blue - this left me with some inked lines that I could then re-composite with the original coloured version... I tidied up any stray bits and mucked around with some effects until I was happy!
Then I just cropped it down to the correct dimensions.
I hope that was interesting for the lovely people who follow my blog - and not just me wittering on about my bonkers approach to making pictures.
8 comments:
gosh, it really sounds quite laborious. now i know why you're so busy all the time, x
Fascinating insight into your work practice sir. Always interesting to see the nuts and bolts of how others go about things. That's a surprising but really lovely and effective colour combination on the final image of the salmon table cloth v's violet/purple background . Great work...great blog fodder sir! Will you be posting the rest sometime...? Look forward to seeing them, and any other tit bits from your plate as it were...
Verification word: "forki" ... just needs the T on the end :)
ooops had to verify again: gasma .. just needs an S and K :) I like this verification collecting game :)
Fascinating insight into your work practice sir. Always interesting to see the nuts and bolts of how others go about things. That's a surprising but really lovely and effective colour combination on the final image of the salmon table cloth v's violet/purple background . Great work...great blog fodder sir! Will you be posting the rest sometime...? Look forward to seeing them, and any other tit bits from your plate as it were...
Verification word: "forki" ... just needs the T on the end :)
ooops had to verify again: gasma .. just needs an S and K :) I like this verification collecting game :)
sorry for the TWO posts... blogger went screwy there for a moment... OK, sorry for this wasted post too... I only did it to collect another verification ;) A bit boring though... "glesten" ... think it's a town in Wales (ala Meaning of Lif :)
Something V screwy... had to verify AGAIN on this one too : "chiper"... keep your chin up eh...:)
Great drawing Kev,and allways really interesting to see how different artist work, on the various stages!
Great illustration and scene and thank you for sharing your process so fully...really interesting :)
Love your process, I did not know so much went into it!
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