Saturday, November 12, 2011

Unfinished Storybook Project.


Back in 2009 I was lucky enough to be offered a job illustrating an amazing children's book story about a wandering dog whose free spirited nature lands him in all kinds of trouble. Unfortunately I ended up leaving the project, but I still look at these as some of the best traditional media illustrations I've ever created. They're all about 90% done. I was looking at some fantastic illustrators like Carter Goodrich, Shaun Tan, David Catrow, Bill Sienkiewicz, Timothy Basil Ering, and Omar Rayyan. I really like their mixed media apporach. It seemed to add a lot of vibrancy and life to things. I also liked that in a lot of ways, you could see the original sketch maintained with the used of linework. I tried a new method drawing a layout sketch in colored pencil, painting in watercolor washeds first and then acrylic in a series of washes to build up harder darks. Then I pulled out areas with colored pencils to create color vibration or add texture. Instead, it frequently made me tighten and refine the paintings even further, but coloristically and texturally I definitely saw an improvement.


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