Free Art Show 2010 (Part 3)
Posted by trev | Filed under Illustration
Some more samples of my contribution to the 2010 Free Art Show.
Tags: free art, free art show 2010, Illustration, pentel brush pen, PITT Big Brush Pen, watercolor
Free Art Show 2010 (Part 2)
Posted by trev | Filed under Illustration
Some more samples of my contribution to the 2010 Free Art Show.
Tags: free, free art, free art show 2010, Illustration, pentel brush pen, PITT Big Brush Pen, watercolor
Free Art Show 2010 (Part 1)
Posted by trev | Filed under Illustration
Once again, I am participating in the Free Art Show, the brainchild of Gordon Przybyla and Dylan Metrano where artists give away hundreds of pieces of free art through the month of December. The art can be found in Newburyport, MA (at Fowles, Caffe Di Siena, Plum Island Coffee Roasters, The Firehouse and The Dance Place in the Tannery) and Portsmouth, NH (Ganesh Imports). If you are out and about in those towns, keep an eye out for the Free Art boxes!
For my contributions, I decided to whip up a series of small two-color illustrations with my Pentel Brush Pen and PITT Big Brush Pen (with the occasional watercolor thrown in here and there). A handful of my contributions are posted above. I will be posting other samples throughout the week.
Tags: free art, free art show 2010, Illustration, pentel brush pen, PITT Big Brush Pen
Letterpress Redux
Posted by trev | Filed under Illustration, Odds & Ends
Last week, I attended the second Letterpress workshop at the Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. Where the first workshop went over the basics of the art of letterpress, this workshop was more free form, allowing us a chance to work on our own projects.
My plan was to do a series of small cards that incorporated my illustrations with letterpressed type. Unfortunately, a business meeting forced me to miss half of the two-day workshop so I was forced to scale back my plans a bit. Instead of a series of cards, I focused on completing just one. You can see the results above.
I created the illustration before I went to the workshop. The text I was planning to letterpress was the opening lyrics for the song “Simple Girl” by the band Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr, so I wanted a drawing of a woman that would fit nicely with the lines. The final drawing was a simple brush and ink drawing that I scanned in and colored in a light tint of cyan. I then printed out a bunch of cards on my inkjet (I had originally hoped to silkscreen it, but a lack of time, resources and experience forced me to alter my plans).
Once at the workshop, I looked for an appropriate typeface to set my text. Originally, I wanted the text to overlap and integrate with the illustration, but I had trouble finding a typeface in the perfect size for that. Scrapping those plans, I instead decided to set the type nicely in the ample white space that the illustration provided. I selected Caslon 14pt Text for the type. The rest was relatively simple (thanks to the expert guidance of workshop instructor and letterpress/bookmaking diva Sarah Smith).
The second letterpress workshop was just was good as the first. I am already trying to figure out a way to get more press time in the future.
Tags: brush, dale earnhardt jr jr, Illustration, ink, letterpress, lyrics, Montserrat College of Art, typography
Free Art 2009
Posted by trev | Filed under Illustration
The illustration above is one of the pieces I submitted for Free Art 2009. The Free Art show is a way to give out free art by local artists throughout the month of December. If you happen to find yourself in Newburyport, MA; Portland, ME; Biddeford, ME; or Portsmouth, NH, keep an eye out for the Free Art boxes at participating locations.
This year I submitted a mix of prints of my digital illustrations (like the one one above), as well as some original brush and ink drawings. I’ll be posting some more of my submissions over the coming weeks.
Tags: digital, free art, free art 2009, Illustration
Fall into Spring
Posted by trev | Filed under Illustration
Here’s an illustration that originally did for the 2008 Free Art project late last year. I was really happy with how it turned out, but in my haste to get to the kickoff for that, I left this one at home. Too bad. I’m sure I’ll find some other use for this down the road.
Tags: autumn, fall, free art, Illustration
Image of the Day
Posted by trev | Filed under Odds & EndsI’ve been slowly getting sucked into the whole Twitter thing. It’s difficult to articulate exactly why it is sucking me in, but I seem to be hooked. Perhaps, it’s just because all of the cool kids are doing it. I am highly impressionable.
Anyways, Twitter seemed like the perfect platform to share some of the cool and inspiring illustrations and images that I have stumbled across during my travels on the interwebs. Starting today, I will be posting my selection for Image of the Day to my Twitter stream. You can subscribe here, or follow along via the updates in the sidebar. Enjoy!
Tags: Illustration, image, image of the day, twitter
Process
Posted by trev | Filed under Illustration, Preliminary DrawingsI’m a bit of a process junkie. I can’t get enough of learning how artists do what they do. Everyone has their own way of doing things and it’s interesting to see how different people attack similar problems.
Since I get asked from time to time about my process, I thought it might be time to do a quick write up about how I do a typical illustration. A word of caution. The way I do things is no where near the best way to do things. In fact, in some ways I’m probably making things a little more difficult for myself than I need to, but it’s just the way my process has developed. I have a certain comfort level with it, so that outwieghs the wonky parts of my process. Also, keep in mind that my process typically varies from illustration to illustration. That aside, the process detailed below is a decent overview of how I work.
Alright, time to get started. Let’s look at how I created the Spacehawk illustration I posted a little while ago. All my illustrations start with dozens and dozens of doodles. I do all of my doodles with good ole fashioned pencil (or pen) and paper. Since the rest of the process will be entirely digital, I really enjoy the tactile nature of working in the “real” world.
The doodle phase is loosely divided into two parts. The first part is all about idea generation, coming up with the overall concept. For me, idea generation is the best part of the whole process. It’s fun watching ideas take shape and grow. The second half of the doodle phase is all about settling on the rough drawing of how that idea will look. Things getting a little bit tougher at this point because reality starts to set in. Can I do an idea justice? Does the idea hold the same appeal now that it is now becoming a bit more tangible?
The doodle stage ends when I have a rough drawing that will form the foundation for the digital illustration. How well refined the rough drawing is varies form illustration to illustration. Sometimes, if the illustration is particularly tricky, I’ll refine the rough drawing to the point where it is pretty close to how the final illustration will look. Other times, the rough drawing will be a mass of loose scribbles. In those cases, much more of the “drawing” will be done in the later stages. Keep in mind, that this rough drawing will not actually be seen in the final drawing. It will be completely redrawn digitally. So when settling on a rough drawing, I am not looking for the final drawing, just something that has some looseness and vitality that can carry over to the final drawing. The image below shows a page from my sketchbook that has the rough drawing for the Spacehawk illustration.
Once I have a rough drawing I like, I scan it in to Photoshop and clean it up a little if necessary. Occasionally, my rough drawings will actually be a composite of several doodles. In those cases, the separate doodles are stitched together in Photoshop.
Now the real work begins. I import the rough drawing into an Illustrator file. The rough is placed on a locked layer and I begin laying in shapes in layers above it using the pen tool. Illustrator’s pen tool gets a bad rap because, by nature, it’s such a mechanical tool. To me, that’s one of it’s greatest strengths. Since it is different than using a pencil or brush, I can really focus on the shapes that are making up my illustration. My stuff is all about reducing things to as simple shapes as I can, so being forced to really focus on this is really helpful.
I trace all of the shapes in the rough drawing with the pen tool. I try not to trace the rough drawing. Rather, I am continually looking for ways to improve the illustration by finding areas that need simplified or smoothed out. One of the advantages of working in vector format, is that I can continually massage the shapes to get them where I want them. The image below shows the SpaceHawk illustration after I drew in all of the shapes.
As I am laying in all the shapes, I also starting to make initial color choices. Going into this phase I’ll usually have a pretty good idea of what color scheme I’m going to use, but sometimes, the plan changes as the illustration starts to take shape. Before I am finished with the Illustrator phase, I try to get the colors in the general ballpark of where I want them (with the understanding that I will tweak them once I get the illustration into Photoshop). The basic color version of the Spacehawk illustration looked like this:
Eagle-eyed readers will notice that the image of the female alien photograph is not in this stage. I drew that in a separate document and added it to the illustration during the next stage.
Now, we’re entering the home stretch. I export the illustration from Illustrator as a layered PSD file and open it up in Photoshop. At this point, the illustration doesn’t look too bad, but it needs some tone and texture to really give it that classic children’s book feel I’m going for. Using a wacom tablet, I start adding in a little shadow to help give the shapes some form. I also add in some texture to some of the elements and the background. Usually, the colors need some tweaking at this point as well so I usally add some adjustment layers to give the illustration a little extra pop. The final step is to add a little dash of the Spatter effect to help tone down the ultra-hard edge that comes from working with vectors.
And that’s it. Apologies for the long post. I hadn’t expected to ramble on so long. And despite the length, I think I still may have glossed over a couple parts. Feel free to drop me a line if you are looking for any more specific information.
Tags: doodles, how to, Illustration, illustrator, photoshop, process, rough, spacehawk, vector
Sneak Peek
Posted by trev | Filed under Illustration
The above image is a sneak peek for a personal project I’ve been working on. Details soon! The sketch this illustration started from can be seen in a post from earlier this month.
Tags: Illustration
Spacehawk
Posted by trev | Filed under Illustration
Time for another contribution for a Remake/Remodel thread at Warren Ellis‘ Whitechapel forum. This week’s subject is Basil Wolverton’s Spacehawk. Spacehawk was a sci-fi adventurer in the typical demented Wolverton vein. I can’t match that kind of delightful insanity, but I was struck by this little bit from the character description:
Inside the spaceships, Wolverton liked panels showing the Spacehawk staring out one of his large windows, looking at a spectacular outer space panorama.
I had to draw that. An “emo” space hero who did a lot of navel gazing between adventures, contemplating his lonely existance and pining for lost loves. Not a book I’d like to read so much, but it sure made for a fun illustration!
Tags: basil wolverton, emo, Illustration, remake/remodel, sci-fi, science fiction, spacehawk, warren ellis, whitechapel
