Illustration Friday - Lost

I've been very lax about posting to this blog.  Lately, I've become addicted to tumblr and have two blogs there where I post sketches and other items of interest with minimal writing attached (vincentdesjardinsdraws and Jumbled Planet).

But, today I wanted to post and talk about the image I submitted for this week's "Illustration Friday," challenge which is the word 'Lost.'  I was originally inspired to create this illustration by a photo of a spooky, moss covered forest (you can see the original image, below left).  I created the final image in Painter, but before I began, I opened the photo in Photoshop and created a threshold layer so that I could better see the lights and darks in the image. I then used this as a visual reference to create the darkest shapes in my image.

From there, I began sketching in Painter 12.  Originally I had thought to do this as a digital oil or gouache painting, but then I thought it might be more dramatic to do it as a black and white digital pen and ink drawing.  From the very start, I knew I had wanted to have a rabbit in the image.  I like rabbits and I thought it might provide some tension to show an innocent looking little rabbit lost in this rather imposting and dramatic looking forest.

Beginnings of digital pencil sketch

In the above image, I've begun to map the darkest areas

After I had blocked in the darkest trees, I added additional layers to fill in the background shading.  By having the cross-hatched background shading on a different layer, I could erase areas of it without damaging the main shapes.  This came in very handy when I decided to add some shafts of sunlight to the image. As I continued to work, I began to deviate from the original photo and started adding branches and leaves where I thought the image could use some texture and visual interest.

Here, I'm filling in the background with lots of cross hatching.

As I darkened the background, I decided to add some rays of sunlight, to help guide the viewer's eye toward the rabbit.

Finally, after finishing the image in black and white, I decided it might be fun to do a colored version.  Since I had created the black and white image on several layers it was easy to add another layer underneath to create the color.  All I did was flatten the black and white layers to a single layer and changed the resulting layer to a 'multiply' blending mode, which allowed the color to show through in the white areas.

Above is the finished piece and below, you can see what the watercolor layer looks like without the pen and ink layer.

Illustration Friday - Boundaries

This week's word challenge was 'Boundaries,' and I put off working on it all week. Originally I thought I would do something showing a boundary between light and dark or night and day, but I didn't have a clear enough vision in my head of what it would look like. So, instead I came up with something else entirely. My new idea was inspired by a sweet illustration I saw by Barbara Cooney in the 1949 book, "Read Me Another Story." It shows a little hen standing in the middle of a pen. Her world definitely has boundaries.  In my image, a fence is a boundary that is keeping a little rabbit out of the lettuce patch (You can click on the illustration to see it larger).

I experimented with a technique I don't usually work in - a digital scratchboard technique. My original digital sketch was done in Painter 11. A few days ago I finally succumbed to an email from Corel with details on a special upgrade deal for Painter 12. I bit the bullet and purchased it and it arrived today. I could have finished this image in version 11, but I was anxious to get my feet wet with the upgrade so I finished the image in version 12 (more about it in a future blog).

On the right, you can see my original sketch. You'll notice that originally, I showed much more of the garden. As I worked, I decided to zoom in a bit and bring the viewer closer to the rabbit.

Below is the Barbara Cooney illustration that was my inspiration.