Gershwin & Bernstein Poster Comps

Here are three comps for a mock-job doing a poster for the July 10th performance of the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. The program includes works by Bernstein & Gershwin, so I tried to add an Art Deco flare and lots of jazzy blue. The sailor is a reference to Bernstein's On The Town.

Process for Synesthete Editorial

The secret weapon to any great concept is...

The brainstorm! Some people like charts. Some people like bubble-webs. I like a wall of text. It is basically a stream-of-consciousness word-spew where I eliminate all of my terrible ideas. I start out writing down ideas that pop into my mind, but then I systematically find new ideas. How I like to work is take two ideas that summarize my article, find visual representations for each idea, and then combine those two visual representations to create an interesting illustration. For this article I found dealing with testing methods on synesthetes, I found visual representations for "testing" and visual representations for "synesthesia". For instance "stethoscope" representing testing paired with "lab rat" for synesthete. You can see the problem with that combination without having to literally "see" it in a thumbnail sketch. My image would read more as a commentary on animal testing. Scratch that. I re-thought how I could represent synesthetes and decided to use a literal representation of a synesthete being tested alongside some metaphorical imagery.

 

Preliminary scribbles that should never see the light of day. 

A more presentable sketch. 

Comp. variation 1. 

 

Comp. variation 2. 

 

Comp variation 3. 

My alter ego with a swimming cap made of octopus tentacle. Unfortunately, I don't have any pre-polished painting to show you. Basically, I work monochomatically with a basic round brush and then use a nice texturey "oil paint" mixer brush for blending. I develop each of the elements in this piece on a separate layer before merging.

I have learned to introduce a general idea of my color scheme before I am completely done with rendering. This somehow enhances the messy brushstrokes that need more taming and gives me an idea of what to do to fight the greying affect that any color on color mode gives to mid-range values.

 

Fin!

A Boat Load of Sketches

What have I been doing all this month? Well, I have been a busy SCAD bee. The following are all sketches for my Illustration for Publication class. Each one goes with a different project except for the second- and third-to-last, which are for the same project. So far, none have been chosen by clients, which would result in a final rendering, but I don't mind too much. It has been great to focus on learning how to sketch faster and use a minimal amount of photo reference. There's nothing wrong with photo reference--I think it's essential in the final stages. However, you can definitely sketch faster if you spend less time searching for the perfect photo.

That Astrodon neck is looking a little shaky. Will have to channel my inner Gurney if I take this one to completion.

Blue Steel Selfie

Here is a nearly finished poster for Zoolander with one of my favorite reference photos I took. I do have a couple reference photos that I used more directly, but they aren't quite as funny.

The assignment is part of my Illustration for Publication class at SCAD, which I think has been my most informative class so far. Students take on projects from local organizations, submitting sketches and then following through with the final if their sketch is chosen. It will be exciting to see how the class unfolds and what projects we get to work on.

Book Cover Preview

Here's a preview of a book cover I'm making for The Outsiders!

Good 'ole Johnny and Ponyboy.

A Griffon is Born

The griffon fetus painting that I started over my "snow days" in Savannah has been completed.

I'm very happy to have completed my first all-acrylic painting, even if it is just 3x3 in. He is going to be entered into the Tiny Pleasures show put together by Jon Schindehette that will be displayed at Spectrum Fantastic Live 3. Whew. There's almost too much awesome in that one sentence.

More info about the show here. You still have plenty of time to enter!

If It Doesn't Look Good, Change It

Here are some in-progress shots for yet another recital poster commission:

Thumbnails. I just noticed how much the trumpet looks like a miniature clarinet in some of these.

A little more development on the chosen thumbnail. This was especially necessary with the completely different viewpoint of the pose.

 

At this point I have gathered some better reference photos. Sometimes your reference photos give you better ideas for the pose and composition, such as having the trumpet in a resting position and over-exposed lighting on the face. I thought I would try adding color at this stage, but found out that I needed to develop my figure. I actually went back to working in black and white before adding color again. 

Quite a bit of work up until this point. I'm very much enjoying pushing that glow as far as it can go.

After receiving some suggestions from my professor and classmates, I decided to change the entire background so that the eye of the storm is positioned in the lower corner. The visual flow is much better and the perspective makes more sense too. Even this late in the game, re-painting large sections is worth the time.

Some very small, but important tweaks. These can be more easily viewed flipping through the pop-up viewer.