Illustration Friday - Transportation

Another week, another 'Illustration Friday' challenge, this week the word is "Transportation." My first thought was to do something with futuristic cars and monorails, but then another thought popped into my head, and that had to do with bicycles and dogs. The original idea was to have a bicyclist transporting a little dog in her bike's basket. But as I thought about the idea, I began to embellish it. I thought it might be funny to have other dogs chasing after the bicycle. Then, I thought it would be even better if the bicyclist were carrying two dogs, one riding up front, the other in a basket on the back of the bike. The dog in the back basket would have a self-satisfied look on its face, as if it were taunting the dogs that were chasing it. The last two things I decided to add were extra little details - a small puppy watching from the window of the building and an upset cat, hissing at the dog parade below while balancing on a balcony railing.

Here is my original pencil sketch. You can see that off to the left of the building, I had originally intended to add some stylized clouds and the edge of another building, but in the end, I decided to eliminate those details, keeping it simple with just the suggestion of some tree shapes.

I created the image in Corel Painter and primarily used the digital watercolor brushes, especially the New Simple Water brush and the Coarse Mop Brush which gives a nice fuzzy bleed effect after you've applied the stroke.  For the details I used a couple of Painter's pen brushes - the Smooth Round Pen and a modified version of the Leaky Pen.  I colored the bike rider's hair and most of her clothing, as well as the bicycle baskets with Painter's gouache brush. In the screen shot to the left, you can see where I've begun to color in the background.

I used a lot of layers so that it would be easier to make changes. In this screen shot, you can see the list of layers that I set up. When you have this many layers, it becomes very important to name them so that you know what is on each layer.

In this last screen shot, you can see a close-up view of the little dog in the window and the hissing cat that I added as background details.

One of my inspirations for the style of this piece, especially as far as the background goes, was the artwork in Disney's 1961 animated "One Hundred and One Dalmatians." That film's sketchy drawing style, brought a big change to the look of Disney's animated films.  It's my understanding that a new technique for xeroxing the artist's pencil drawings directly on to the animation cels, is what gave the film its unique look. But even the character design and coloring of the backgrounds was unique to a Disney feature, it had more of the look of some of the mid-century modern cartoons that were being made at UPA studios than the romantic classical backgrounds of previous Disney features. If you're interested in this subject, I highly recommend the book "Cartoon Modern" by Amid Amidi.

Illustration Friday - Proverb

This week's word for 'Illustration Friday' is "Proverb," and I must admit my first reaction on reading it was, "Oh no!" There were just too many possibilities, how could I choose? Seeing the word 'Proverb,' my first thought was of the Book of Proverbs in the Bible, but I really didn't feel up to illustrating something from the Bible (besides, not knowing the Bible, I'd have to do some research). As I let the word simmer in my brain, I started thinking of old sayings that I could remember and the first one that came into my head was "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Right away, I felt that this one might have illustration possibilities, so I began to think of potential scenarios that I could create using this proverb. My first idea involved a cat. After all, what animal is known for catching birds? And I'm sure any cat who had one bird, would much rather have two. As I thought about the image I wanted to create, I decided I wanted to make this humorous, so I thought about switching the roles of the hunter and its prey. I felt a giant monster bird holding a cat in one hand and contemplating whether or not he should try for the two cats in the bush might be a funny take on the old saying. So that's what I sketched out.

I was happy with the sketch I came up with, but before I began painting it, I began to think of another idea. Maybe I should back up a bit and explain what got me thinking about an alternative image. This week I got a new dog. I had been without a dog for the last three years and I am overjoyed to finally have one again. I've been spending a lot of time with her this week, getting her settled in and starting on her training. So, with dogs on my brain, I began thinking it would be nice to do an image that was dog related. After googling dog proverbs, I found one that was perfect for how I was feeling, "Happiness is a warm puppy." It's a proverb that was popular when I was a teenager back in the seventies and it was written by the great Charles Schulz. So I did a second sketch and decided to submit two entries for this week's challenge.

After drawing this initial image of a boy holding a puppy, I decided to expand the image a bit and show a mother dog sitting and watching the boy cradle her little pup.

Here is the final painted image. Both this image and the one of the monster bird (see above) were painted using Corel Painter 11. I primarily used the watercolor brushes (New Simple Water) and a modified leaky pen brush, but I also added a few touches with the gouache brushes. The only changes I made between the sketch and the finished piece were to the boy's face.

So, for a word that I was initially reluctant to work on, I came up with two illustrations. Maybe an occasional "Oh no!" is a good thing.

Illustration Friday - Caged

Depicting a caged animal in a zoo is a fairly obvious way to interpret this week's 'Illustration Friday,' word, which is "caged," but it is the first thing that came into my mind. I love animals and even though my feelings about zoos are a bit ambivalent, I love going to them for the opportunity it gives me to see animals from around the world. It breaks my heart to see a caged animal, but on the other hand I know that zoos now play an important part in conservation and preserving species that might otherwise go extinct in the wild. For the most part, zoos have come a long way in creating more stimulating and naturalistic enclosures for their animals. I doubt that zoos even use the word cage today to describe where their animals live. Still, even at the best zoos you will see enclosures that seem to small for the animals that they house.  This seems especially true for the big cats like leopards, tigers, cheetahs, ocelots, panthers and lions. Who hasn't gone to a zoo and seen one of these majestic animals pacing back and forth in front of their bars, or just sitting staring into space?

I have been to a great number of zoos here in the USA - the Los Angeles Zoo, the San Diego Zoo, Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, the Cincinnati Zoo, the Indianapolis Zoo and Chicago's Lincoln Park zoo. It was last year while visiting the Lincoln Park zoo where I was saddened to see some of the big cats on display in very old, very cramped enclosures. All of the cats who were awake at the time, sure enough, were pacing back and forth. So, when I thought about the word "Caged," a big cat in a small, concrete cage is what came to my mind.

I created a number of sketches before I finally came up with something I was happy with.  My earliest sketch is this one from my sketchbook where I was trying to develop a sad lion character.

From there I began to develop my scene, putting the lion in a setting, and adding some human characters.

I had a certain vision in my head of what I wanted the people to look like, but I had a difficult time achieving what was in my mind's eye. The character that gave me the most trouble was that of the overweight woman. As you can see in the first sketch, I had her as a mother, being dragged by her little boy to see the lion.

Then I decided to give her a different look - I switched her to this character, a large woman in cat-eye glasses, wearing plaid pants and holding a bag of popcorn. Instead of holding his mother's hand, I gave the little boy a balloon. By this time, I had also added in the two other children.

Although I think that drawing would have worked, I preferred the idea of the little boy dragging his mother over to see the lion, so ultimately I reverted back to my earlier version. I made a few changes though. I slimmed her down a tiny bit, changed the pose of her feet to make her look more like she was in motion and I gave her a purse to hold. I also took the balloon away from the little boy and gave it to the little girl on the left side. I tried to make the ballon a sort of counterbalance to the sun on the right.

Here, with my final sketch on a separate layer, I have begun to block in the colors. The entire image was created in Corel Painter 11. I used Painter's digital watercolor brushes for the walls of the cage and the brick wall foundation. For the lion and the human characters I primarily used Painter's gouache brushes.

As I mentioned earlier, I had a certain vision in my mind's eye of how I wanted this image to look.  My original vision was much more stylized, but I just couldn't get the stylization to look the way that I imagined it. The finished result is closer to the look of a Little Golden Book illustration, which seems to be a style that I'm working in more and more.

Anyway, thanks for reading all of this.  Comments are always welcome!

The Decline of the Golden State

I've been trying to keep the topics in this blog related to the art of illustration, but every once in a while I will be veering off in another direction, to something that has caught my eye or interest.  Last November, in my very first entry to this blog, I talked about a movie theatre that my siblings and I use to attend when we were kids, one that had closed in the early 70s and then was left to fall into ruins.  It was an historic theater called the Golden State and it was located in Riverside, CA.  In my blog I told how I had found a way to sneak inside the old theater where I took some pictures.  Yesterday, I came across some of those photos.  With the exception of the last photo at the bottom of this post, they are all SX-70 polaroids. If you read my original post, you will know that this is the theater where D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," had its sneak preview.  You may also recall that the theater burned down a few years after these pictures were taken.  So, as a sort of visual update to my very first blog entry, here are some photos of the late, great Golden State theater.

The closed box office booth

The door of the booth leaning against the poster cases

Upstairs, outside the manager's office

Water damage to the ceiling

The organ grill

Seats from the auditorium had been ripped out and strewn in the hallway and on the stairs

The candy counter

An exterior shot taken from the rear of the building

A feral cat who was living under the building.  This is one of my favorite photos.  I like the fact that the image is almost monochromatic.  The only vivid color is in the discarded orange, to the left of the cat.

The late, great Golden State Theater

All photos copyright Vincent Desjardins 2010