One Stone, Two Birds

Alright, so here's the deal. I'm publishing this as a post for Illustration Friday's most recent prompt: "proverb." Now, what the illustration actually depicts is someone "seeing the world through rose colored glasses," which is really more of an idiom or expression than a proverb. HOWEVER (and here's where it gets tricky), I had this drawing that I had done for another post that I never got around to finishing so I thought that this would be a good chance to finish the illustration and complete a response for this week's IF, and in that way I would be able to "get two birds with one stone," which is traditionally recognized to be more of a proverb. KABLAMMO. John Gilman, Professional fine artist, illustrator, and designer, and Amateur Rationalizer seeking endorsement to go pro.

+Someone who wears rose colored glasses sees the world around them only as they want to, rather than seeing the reality of the situation.

Following my work on the last post with physical media, I really wanted to achieve a more cohesive appearance for this piece through employing a bit more texture and atmosphere, so with that in mind let's boogie.

I started with a drawing that I finished in pen and ink on moleskin paper (I wanted something with less tooth). When I drew this one I was going for a more graphic feel, especially with the pen. Here's the drawing once I brought it into the computer:

I then isolated the linework using the method that I've recently adopted (which works like gangbusters and I am very excited for), and proceeded to begin the process of flats. I wanted the area contained in the rose colored glasses cone of vision to be much more planar and tidy and the grungy world of reality.

You can see that at this point I didn't put in the planks of the rose bench or the vertical pattern on the curtain behind the bench that the left-most tree becomes in the rosy realm.

Next I changed the colors to match with my original intentions, by using mostly passive, appealing, and warmly seductive (oh my) colors in the rose colored world and more jarring, subtly sallow colors in the real world. I began adding more tones and variations in the colors at this point, and here's what it looked like with the right colors mostly placed in:

Now then, on to that cohesive texture I was talking about earlier. I wanted to add a gray/sandy textural haze to the real world and a pinkish glow to the rose world. I used graphite and powdered charcoal on vellum and scanned them into the computer. Fortunately the line isolation technique is so effective it even picks up such subtle variations as this (for the real world):

and this (for the rosy realm):
I colored those accordingly and placed them beneath the linework layer and this is what we have without the linework visible:

Sam Bosma did a wonderful job of explaining this process on his blog and it was an invaluable resource while I was working. He's also got some pretty stupendous work, y'all should check him out. This is the final piece again, after having lightened the highlights for the whole thing a bit and removing some of the glasses-wearing man's wrinkles to make him look less like an old lady:

I'm satisfied with the final result and I'm excited for all the possibility that this texture-layering process holds for my other works. I've also got a few more t-shirt designs on the docket so look for them in the near future. I hope you've enjoyed my lengthy rant and that you've had a pleasant time viewing, and that you'll stop back again in the future.

Sweet Summer Rain

This was intended to be submitted last night for this past week's Illustration Friday prompt but it didn't quite make it in under the wire and I wanted to be satisfied with it rather than display something I was unhappy with. And so here it is on the blog! The given prompt was "dessert," and I've seen my fair share of ice cream being eaten and worn this summer so I thought it was only fitting. I recently discovered an even better way to transfer line into Photoshop so that it maintains its integrity and subtlety, so this week I wanted to take full advantage of that. And so, as I usually do, I began with a sketch:

And from that sketch came a more resolved drawing and finally a finished drawing done with graphite on vellum, scanned in, the line isolated, and a quick background color laid in to give a bit more context before going into flats:

This next step might be the most time-consuming, tedious, and a bit thankless actually. It's hard to keep your head above water when the water looks like an undulating paint-by-numbers ocean. However, in the long run laying in flats is totally worthwhile and really advantageous for color isolation and really quick color manipulation from a higher layer. Basically the idea behind flats is this: so long as the adjacent areas aren't the same color (or similar for that matter) you can block out all the major areas and then quickly color them by selecting them with the wand tool and adding the appropriate colors later. Here are my flats:

Like I said above, this makes it easy to then determine the primary colors that you want to use, and here they are (immediately after having finished flats):

After this point is when I can start to resolve and soften the edges a bit more and put in some cleaner and more satisfying points of transition (particularly in her face and grass). Also I drew in the sweet summer rain itself, the falling drips of ice cream. I wanted to do them digitally because I thought it would be pleasing to draw attention to their presence stylistically to provide a point of interest through contrast, and I'm glad I did. Here's the final paint layer before laying the linework back in:

And here's the final image again, linework and all:

Overall I am really pleased with how this piece came out, and I am definitely excited for what the future holds.

Also I wanted to have a link to a clip of Daniel von Bargen saying "Sweet summer rain" from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? but I couldn't find it on YouTube, so use your imagination.

So there you have it, my most recent piece from start to finish (mostly), although admittedly very abridged. I hope that this sheds a bit more light on some parts of the process that I hadn't addressed previously. Look for a few more pieces being added next week sometime, and hopefully an Illustration Friday post that will present itself in a timely fashion (I'm thinking something quicker, good sweet bippy!) Thanks for stopping by, and happy viewing!