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 - Vanity

It seems like ages since I've posted anything new in this blog. It's been a busy month, getting ready for several craft shows, designing and making new things, running my Etsy shop and working on an entry for Tomie dePaola's SCBWI contest have taken up most of my time.

This week's word for the 'Illustration Friday,' challenge is "Vanity." I really had hoped to create something new to illustrate the word, but once again I feel pressed for time, so, I dug up an illustration I did for 'Instinct' magazine's health column back in 2005. I believe the article that accompanied the illustration was about men's hair loss and products on the market that claim to slow it down.

As someone who is bald himself, I can understand the desire to try out hair loss remedies. If there was a magic pill that was 100% effective and worked without side effects to give me back all the hair I had as a youth, I'd certainly take it. Why? Because I guess I'm vain. Isn't that why most people use beauty products, wrinkle removers and similar concoctions that claim to make a person look young again, because of vanity? Everyone wants to look their best, so there's nothing wrong with a little vanity. If nobody cared about how they looked, it certainly wouldn't be pleasant to go out for an evening on the town. No one enjoys looking at a bunch of slobs when they go out for a nice dinner. Now that I've been bald for almost half my life, I've learned to accept the fact that I'll never see myself with a full head of hair again. That doesn't mean I don't miss my hair, it just means I'm not going to throw away my life savings trying to pursue dreams of a youthful appearance. Besides being bald has its advantages, I don't ever have to worry about waking up with 'bed head' hair.

I managed to find the original sketch I submitted to the art director and one of the initial stages of the painting. You can see both of those below. Most of the painting was done in Corel Painter and the textures and lighting effects were then added in Photoshop.

the digital watercolor sketch I sent to the art director for approval

An early stage of the painting before the shading was blended and before the textures were added.

What Mesmerizes You? I.F. Mesmerizing

I had several ideas for this week's 'Illustration Friday,' which this week is the word "mesmerizing." The idea I ended up using came to me while I was sitting in an auto-shop waiting room, waiting to get my oil changed and my tires rotated. There was a big screen TV in the room that was set to a channel playing old sitcoms. I had brought a book to read, but I had a hard time concentrating on it. The giant TV, which was showing an old episode of 'Bewitched,' was so mesmerizing that I found my eyes constantly drifting over to look at it. Since there was no one else in the room, I finally got up and turned the sound down, which helped a little as far as concentrating on my book went.

So, from that experience I came up with the idea of a waiting room filled with children. All of the children in the room, with the exception of one little girl, find the TV to be mesmerizing. The child who is the exception, would rather read her book.  This is my first image that I started and finished using the new Painter 12 upgrade (I did take a side trip into Photoshop to add some filters, but more about that in a minute).

Since it's small enough to fit in my pocket, I almost always carry my camera with me.  For this illustration I consulted a reference photo that I took while in the auto-shop waiting room (see photo at right). From there, I made a digital sketch. I knew I wanted to have the little girl and her book off to one side of the image, so I started by arranging the chairs and figures. After the initial sketch, I did another one where I refined the figures and darkened the lines.

Once I was happy with the sketch, I started doing some coloring. On a separate layer, I filled the canvas with a soft yellow color to give the image some overall warmth. Then, using the Digital Watercolor 'New Simple Water' brush, I began to color in the background and shapes. You can see my progress in the images below (Click on any image to see it larger).

As I worked, I created lots of layers so that I would have the flexibility of changing the opacity of different objects and adding special filters to some areas.  When everything was colored, I saved the image as a Photoshop file and then opened the image in Photoshop CS4.  In Photoshop, I used a third-party filter called Mister Retro (made by Permanent Press) to add some speckled texture to the various layers of color. The second to the last image in the progression (see below), shows the image with all of the coloring finished in Painter, prior to adding the filters. The last image in the progression shows a screen shot of the finished image, re-opened in Painter, after the Mister Retro photoshop filters had been applied. In this image, you can see all of the layers I created while working. I reopened the image in Painter in order to add some shadows on the little girl and under the chairs. I created the shadows on their own layer and painted them using Painter's Smart Strokes 'Textured Chalk' brush.

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 - Burning

The word for this week's 'Illustration Friday' is "Burning." This doesn't happen very often, but when reading this week's word, I immediately had two ideas. The first was to illustrate something using the phrase 'burning desire,' because it's something I recall from an old song, the name of which I've been trying to remember (unsuccessfully) all week. I couldn't quite remember how the lyric went either, so instead of wasting time trying to track it down, I decided to go with my other idea. That idea was to do a funny depiction of the "Burning Man" festival that is held every year in a dry lake bed in Nevada. At the end of the festival, a large wooden sculpture of a man is set on fire, hence the name 'burning man.' I've never been to the festival, but I know people who have gone and I even have one friend who is such a regular attendee of the festival that he considers himself and his wife 'burners.' I have seen lots of pictures from the festival (try Googling 'Burning Man' and you'll come up with hundreds of photos) and one thing that you see a lot of in the pictures is nudity and body paint, but there are also lots of people in outlandish and imaginative costumes. I decided to keep my depiction 'G' rated, so I went the costume route for my characters.

The style I went for was heavily influenced by Jim Flora, the illustrator of many cool album covers from the 1940s and 50s and then later, children's books. I created this image in two parts. First, using Corel Painter, I did the painting that you see in the upper right.  I primarily used the gouache brushes, but I also used the scratchboard tool and a calligraphy pen for some of the line work.  To make the dashed lines, I used a calligraphy pen brush and then used an eraser brush to erase parts of the line.

Once I was happy with the image, I saved it as a tif file, opened it in Photoshop and ran the image through some third party filters (Permanent Press's Mister Retro and Machine Wash) and a few that come with Photoshop. I did lots of experimenting until I finally got to a version that satisfied me (lower color image).  The problem with trying out so many variations and doing so much experimenting is that, unless you write down every step along the way, you'll probably never be able to duplicate the exact same effects and look. Oh well, the important thing is that I created an illustration that I'm happy with.

To the left is the original Painter digital pencil sketch that I created as my guide for painting the final piece.

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 - Cocoon

It's hard to believe that another Friday has rolled around.  This week's word for the Illustration Friday challenge is cocoon.  Of course my first thought was to do something with a butterfly.  I thought I could do something unusual by showing what happens inside the cocoon while the transformation is taking place. Maybe a caterpillar knitting her wings or maybe cozily curled up reading a book while she waits for her wings to grow.  But then, while looking at a book put out by Taschen called "Future Perfect, Vintage Futuristic Graphics," and getting excited by all of the unusual gadgets, machines and visions of what we used to think the future would look like, I decided to take the challenge in a whole other direction. My idea was to create a faux vintage magazine cover, a cover similar in style to those that use to grace "Popular Science" or "Science and Mechanics," in the days when they had great painted cover illustrations that depicted the wonders of the future. So to tie this in with the cocoon challenge, I decided to have the cover illustration of my faux magazine be a human cocoon device for hibernating during long interplanetary space voyages.  I decided I would have a father showing off this device to his son to prepare him for their own voyage into outer space.

In painting it, I looked at a lot of old "Popular Science" covers and noticed that they used a lot of bright primary colors, so that is how I decided on my palette. The illustration was drawn and painted in Corel Painter 11.  After the illustration itself was finished, I opened it in Photoshop and applied a halftone filter to it.  I then added the magazine border and created the fake masthead.  I ran the whole image through some third party filters to give it the look of an aged printed image. I then created a fake mailing address label and as a tribute to my late father, I used his name on it. One of the last steps was to come up with the fake article titles.  I enjoyed doing that, but I probably could have come up with better ones, if I had thought about it a little longer.

Below, you can see my first digital sketch of the idea.  Next to it, on the right is the original Painter image before adding the type and applying the Photoshop filters to it.