So I know I haven't blogged in a bit. The poster took some time. It was large and my laptop was having a bit of a time dealing with it. Where is the poster now? It's in works. I have given the designer the artwork and she is now making all the printed material that is needed. As and illustrator, my work is almost done. I have to figure out the shirt design and then it will be over for me.

I really don't want to show the poster art before it goes LIVE on FOOD GATHERERS. I think they should have the first chance to show it. So I am waiting. I can show parts.

One of the things you have to do at the end stage is to save the art in all kinds of different file formats. (jpg, tiff, eps,png) as well as convert it to black and white. I'll have some teaser images coming up.....

UP AND DOWNS

The poster is coming along. I scanned in the drawing and built it in PHOTOSHOP. HOURS AND HOURS of digital painting and it's still being worked on. This photo is it in an early stage.

THE FUN PART

So I drew the sketch that was selected on tracing paper and scanned that into the computer. Once my sketch is pretty tight, I don't change it all that much in this stage. It just gets better and better. I worked out some of the values first then I begin creating the final piece of art. This is what it's all about. The fun part.

...AND THE WINNER IS!!!!

I can't tell ya. Life is better with surprises. Check back soon.

TIME TO SEE

I worked on the sketches on the computer and created 7 color sketches for Food Gatherers. The sketches were due today. I emailed them and now I wait for responses, feedback and direction. I always feel the same way on every project I do. I get nervous and excited and a mixture of other feelings. It's a bit scary to try to show someone what you are going to do before you do it. I'm not real sure myself what it will turn out like because there is always that bit of luck and surprise that happens. Now I wait. Time to get more coffee.

TRACING IS NOT CHEATING.

When all of my rough drawings are sorted and I have selected the ones that I feel are the best, now is time to redraw them. These new drawings will become the "presentation sketches" that I show to Food Gatherers. For this part I lay tracing paper over the drawings and redraw everything. This could take multiple sheets of tracing paper to get a good drawing. This way, you work on redoing just the parts that need it on a new sheet and leave the drawing you like on the sheet below it. I work on the expressions and details the most. I have 5 drawings to do of which I will probably present the best 3.

This is a technique I learned while at Hallmark Cards in the early 90's. It was one of those things that make being an illustrator so much fun. Drawing is the key to everything as an illustrator. You can't be too good at it and any tricks that make it easier are fine by me.

STACKS AND STACKS

I roughed out 16 ideas on a larger piece of paper. I pulled these from my hordes of thumbnails that I drew in my sketchbook. I have many ideas that I like so now it really comes down to editing. Editing is the hard part because I like a lot of the ideas. It's just a question of what will work the best for the client? I refer back to notes that I took in our initial meeting and sort the stack of rough sketches into piles of my favorites. I have shown them to my wife who is always a good sounding board. As my personal muse, she has a duty to not only inspire me but stop me from doing work that will make me look like a hack. She is honest and has a great eye.

My next step is to pick the 3 or 4 I think will work the best and then redraw them in detail to make them into sketches that a I call "presentation quality." Under a tighter deadline, this whole process is accelerated and may take a few hours to go from thumbnails to presentation sketch. I can't wait to see what I'm gonna end up doing final art on.