Illustration Friday - Book

I haven't submitted anything for 'Illustration Friday' in quite a while, but when I saw this week's topic was the word "Book," I couldn't resist participating. Over a ten year period, I worked at two different independent bookstores and during that time one of the things I was responsible for was editing the newsletters for both stores. Because I'm also an artist, I created a lot of book-related spot illustrations, especially for the children's newsletter that I created. I don't remember if this image was for the newsletter or not, but I did use it for a while on my business card. It started off as a black and white pen and ink sketch which I then turned into a color illustration in Adobe Illustrator.  I then took that image, exported it as a tiff file and opened it in Photoshop where I applied some Mister Retro filters to give it the look of an old, scuffed print image.

Illustration Friday - Chicken

When I first saw the word for this week's 'Illustration Friday' challenge, which this week is "Chicken," I wasn't sure of what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I wanted to do something somewhat retro looking. My first sketch showed a chick with a worm in its mouth being chased by a mother hen while another chick comes running in from the side. For some reason I couldn't get the sketch to look the way I imagined it in my head, so I tried again. This time I decided to eliminate one of the chicks from the foreground and to have the hen and chick pursuing the worm (which I decided to turn into a caterpillar). By doing this, it allowed me to make the hen and caterpillar larger and therefore give me some space to show a facial expression on the caterpillar.

First Sketch

Revised Sketch

After I was happy with the sketch, I placed it into a new Adobe Illustrator file where I started to draw the basic color shapes (I could have done this in Painter, which I used for doing the sketch, but I don't like Painter's shape tool as well as I like Illustrator's).

To the left is the image after I traced the basic shapes in Illustrator. From here, I exported the file as a Photoshop file where I used a Mister Retro filter on the shapes to give them the appearance of a vintage print.  With Mister Retro you can make it look like the ink has been scuffed or even out of register.  You can also add halftone dots.

Once I finished adding the Mister Retro filter, I reopened the file in Painter where I used some of Painter's brushes to add in detail. If I knew more about Photoshop's brushes I could have finished the image in Photoshop, but I find Painter's brushes unbeatable when it comes to imitating chalks, pastels, conte crayon, watercolor and leaky pens.

To the right is the image after I started adding some details in Painter.

At this point, I was pretty happy with the image and could have called it quits, but then another idea struck me. While working on this image I had come across an old card game from my childhood. It was a card game based on the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show. I have always loved the graphics on card games from the 1960s so I decided to try and make my image look like a vintage children's playing card. That was my first idea anyway.  As I continued to work on the image, I began to think that it might be even better if I tried to duplicate the look of an old card game box.

Here is the original box from the Bullwinkle card game.  I scanned this box and then removed the illustration in Photoshop so that I would have a blank background to work with.

Image with the layer mode set to Darken

I pasted my image of the chicken over the blank box and scaled it to fit. I changed the layer mode to darken, which made the image somewhat transparent allowing the textures from the box to show through. But because this also made the colors too dark, I decided to duplicate the chicken layer and to place the new layer under this original layer.  I changed the layer mode on the new layer to screen.  This caused the colors on this layer to brighten almost to the point of looking washed out, but when viewed through the layer above it, it made the colors look just right. 

Image with layer mode set to Screen and the above Darken layer turned off

Image with both the Darken layer and the Screen layer visible

The last step was adding in the text.  I decided to call my fictional game "Who's Got the Worm?" because that sounded to me like the name of a children's card game. After trying a few fonts, I ended up using one called Saddlebag.  I played around with distorting it a bit, being careful not to make it look like a computer distortion (I wanted this to look vintage after all).  Once I got the letters to look the way that I wanted, I duplicated the text layer.  With the lower of the two text layers, I rasterized the type, selected it and then expanded the selection by 20 pixels.  Then I added a red stroke to the outside edge of the selection.  By expanding the selection it gave the stroke some distance from the original text on the layer above, so it looked like an outline that was drawn around, but not touching the original lettering.  I then ran the text through a Mister Retro filter to give it the scuffed, vintage printed look that I had given the illustration and then lowered the opacity a bit so that some of the texture of the box showed through.

Illustration Friday - Mail

It's been a while since I've had time to do a posting, but now that I'm feeling a little more caught up, I can post my latest entry for Illustration Friday. This week's word is 'Mail.' The holiday season creates a heavier work load for a lot of people, but only a few of those people have to do that extra work out in the rain, sleet and snow. Your neighborhood post-person is one of those people. Even in this era of email, when fewer people are mailing Christmas cards, there are still lots of packages to deliver. When I read the email with this week's word, I had just returned from the post office and had waited in line for close to half an hour, so the mail service was on my mind. So this is my tribute to those men and women who make sure that the mail gets through in all kinds of weather.

In my first sketch, the mailman looked a bit too much like Bob Cratchit in "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol," which I had just finished watching before I made this sketch, so I revised it and made him into a slightly older man with a mustache and white hair.

Here is the cleaned up and revised sketch.

After finalizing my sketch, I placed it into a new Adobe Illustrator file and began to trace the shapes. You can see the start of that process in this screen shot.

Here is the illustrator file with all of the original colors in place.  When I got to this stage, I exported the file as a photoshop file (.psd) and then opened that file in Photoshop, where I ran the layers through some 'Mister Retro' distressing filters to give the colors a more vintage feel. I also added a hue/saturation adjustment layer where I changed the colors to give it a colder, more wintry look.

I then re-opened the file in Painter where I put in some of the line details using a leaky pen brush and some snow texture using some of Painter's chalk and pastel brushes.

After saving the file again as a .psd file, I re-opened it one more time in Photoshop where I ran it through a 'Machine Wash,' filter to give the snow and sky a more scuffed texture.  I also decided to crop the image. I'm having a hard time deciding which I like better - this final cropped version, or the version just proceeding it? Comments are always appreciated!

Illustration Friday - Double

Since I've been sick all of this past week, I still haven't finished the 'Illustration Friday' challenge from July 16th ("Breakfast"), so for this week's challenge, which is the word "Double," I decided to go with something simpler. Simpler in subject matter, simpler in style. Because it's been so hot here (not to mention the fact that I had a low fever all week), I've been thinking of ways to cool off. When we were in Madison, WI a few weeks back we stopped in at the University of Wisconsin's student union (more than once) to have some of the delicious ice cream served up by their ice cream stand, The Daily Scoop. They were very generous with their servings, and though I always asked for a single scoop, they always gave me a double scoop. So, with ice cream on my mind, I decided to do an image of two friends, who while out walking their dogs, decided to pop into the ice cream parlor and get a double scooped cone.

In the first sketch I made, I had the two girls standing side by side and looking straight ahead. But then I decided upon the Ice Cream Parlor scene and decided it might be better if I showed them sitting across from one another. This way I could put a little perspective on the scene and show what was going on outside the shop window.

Here is my second sketch where you can see how I changed their positioning. After adding this sketch as a separate layer in my Painter document, I then sketched in the rest of their bodies and the background.

At first I thought I would outline the drawing using one of Painter's sketchy pen brushes, but for some reason I didn't like the quality of the line and I thought I was starting to lose some of the vitality of the original pencil sketch. In this image, you can see how I've started to ink in the figure on the left. In the end I decided to add a new layer with a cleaned up pencil sketch and in addition, I allowed the layer containing the original sketch to partially show through.

In case you're wondering how I did the backwards lettering on the window - I set the type up in Adobe Illustrator and put it along a curved line.  I then exported that file as a tiff file and opened it up in Photoshop.  In Photoshop I flipped it and gave it some perspective. I then saved it again as a tiff file and placed it on a separate layer in my Painter document. From there, on a new layer, it was easy to trace over it with Painter digital watercolor brush.

Here is the original text created in Illustrator and saved as a tiff file.



Here it is after I flipped it and gave it some perspective in Photoshop. I then used this as a separate layer in my Painter image to guide me in painting the lettering on the window.

Illustration Friday - Slither

I've always had an interest in patterns - everything from vintage fabrics and wallpapers to contemporary wrapping papers, fascinates me.  I particularly love patterns where you need to look hard to find the repeat. I recently purchased a book from Taschen publishers titled Decorative Art 50s and I've been pouring over the section on textiles and wallpapers studying the various depictions of mid-century modern fabrics.  


When I learned that this week's word for "Illustration Friday," was 'Slither,' I decided to try and do something different - I would attempt to interpret the word by creating a pattern. After some initial trial and error I finally discovered that in Corel Painter, by going to the Pattern palette and selecting 'Define Pattern,' the program would tile what ever it was that I was drawing. For example - any shape that I drew that ran off of the bottom edge, would reappear in the appropriate spot at the top edge so that the image would automatically be lined up for tiling (I still had trouble getting Painter to save my patterns, but that's another story). After creating a few sketches, I would save these as tiff files and then place them in an Adobe Illustrator file where after transforming them into vector shapes (using the 'Live Trace' option) they could easily be turned into pattern swatches that could be used for filling shapes.  I still have some problems with seams showing, but that's a problem I'm sure I can figure out.  Anyway, I did a few different designs using snakes (to go with the 'slither' theme) and here are my favorites.

First, here is one of the original digital pencil sketches.

Next, is a quick test in Illustrator to see how the elements look in a pattern fill. I was really happy with the way this looked because I felt that the repeat wasn't too obvious.

Here is a colored version, where for some reason, the repeat is more noticeable - you can see a grid formation formed by each element block.

Here are a couple of other experiments that I did, also using snakes as a motif.