New promo piece

One of the hazards of becoming a full-time Illustrator is that you find it hard to just sit down and draw for fun.

What I've noticed in the past couple of years is that whenever I sit down to draw the first thought that goes through my head is "How can I make money off of this?"

It can put a real damper on enjoying the act of sketching.

Especially when you're in a slow period.

When all you're thinking about is how to get more work so you can pay the bills.

I do my best to fight off the "Money making blues" the best I can when I open up my sketchbook so that I can let my brain wander and relieve some stress.

I draw whatever comes to mind and try to fill up the pages with as many images as I can.

Sometimes they lead to an idea for a project that I can use as an Illustrator.

Like the image below.

I had been sketching birds in my sketchbook.

I often draw birds and bugs when I let my brain run free.

I guess it's due to a love of nature and a library full of books I read in school.

The image you see above originally started out as an idea for a simple animation for my church to show before services start. I decided to do it on my own and bring it in to show.

I haven't done the animation yet. I have to fire up my old G4 and open up my Flash program and learn how to use it properly.

I made a couple of animations way back when, but I never got the timing right.

So I'll have to spend some time experimenting.

While I was working out the bird characters I started liking the image as a moment in time and thought it would be good for a example of my digital art.

If you've followed this blog at all, you'll know that it's mostly traditional art that I post here.

I prefer to do my art traditionally lately because I spent 8 years doing mostly digital art and started missing being able to hold the finished piece in my hands and be proud of what I accomplished.

I do however still like being able to digital art.

I just like it to be kind of flat and graphic, not realistic.

So I decided to work this image up as a promo piece to send in an e-mail to prospective clients. Above.

One of the other habits you'll develop as a freelancer is that you will try to get as many uses as you can out of one image.

In this case the image will be used as the promo piece, the animation, and a mock-up of a book sample piece. Below.

As you can see, I cropped the image so that it would work as a two page spread.

So I have managed to take one image and figure out 3 ways to use it.
1. As an e-mail promo piece.
2. As a digital portfolio piece.
3. and as a animation.

I might even take these characters and work up a couple of more mock up book pages, or a simple story.

Inking 102

Here's another revisited piece of art for my Black on white portfolio.

It's a piece featuring Vincent Van Gogh and Toulouse Lautrec.

The main reason for revisiting this piece is that the original painted version was damaged by a colored liquid of some sort.

The secondary reason is to continue my inking development.

So this was the original line art for the painted version...

It was never intended to be final art.

In order to do an inked drawing from it I reduced the size to fit on an 8.5 by 11 piece of bristol paper. Then I reduced the opacity of the art to 10%...

and printed it out on the bristol paper.

The result is that I had a basic outline to start with that wouldn't get in my way if I wanted to alter anything. And I did change a couple of things here and there.

The first pass at inking came out looking like this...

I like to scan the art in stages so I can see it on my screen and save the art. That way if I do something to it later that I don't like, I can print out the saved version and start again without completely starting over.

I looked it over and decided that I needed to do something about the lady on right. She was much to white, which made her the center of attention.

I also decided that the dog on the bottom left ,the flower pot, the two guys faces, and the background needed more work. 

This is the result...

I scanned it and looked it over.

I felt that the background , some of the painting of the lady, and Van Gogh's hat needed to get darker.

This is the result...

I also thickened the border to hold it all in.

Overall I'd say it's a successful drawing.

Here's a close up...

I'll do more like this for the portfolio.

Materials...

Cheap bristol paper.

Faber Castell Pitt artist pens - XS and S.

I liked the way the ink from the pen soaked into the paper quickly and didn't smear or bleed.

If I had to cover large areas in solid black it would be a problem like when I used it with the brush. I would most likely fill in the big areas in photoshop to get a solid black and save ink.