DRAWN-Together: From idea to sketch to Illustration

Whenever you do an illustration, you do lines, these lines end up being on the final graphic... but tend to make it look a little sketchy 'sometimes', which can look a little messy (especially when shrunk for a print commission).

So the first thing I do is get the original illustration and remove all the lines, which only leaves the coloured in areas to play with... it looks better already but there are loads of gaps.

When you create these things you have shades and overlaps being covered by a darker line... which means you can get away with more and hit a deadline even faster, not a bad thing but when the lines are removed for a cleaner image you have to redraw almost every single shape there.

After you have done that you then have the problem where you had two different parts or objects that had the same colour or shade... you USED to have a line or curve implying the shape and form of the object... now you don't. What you have to do is then is redesign the colour pallet for all that area and bring in a darker shade and some shadow so you can see the relationship without having a black line 'TELLING' you what your looking at.

Here is BEFORE and AFTER example at this stage...

Click image to enlarge

After I did all this and a LOT more to the original 'Moses' character I then had to rework the whole illustration as the clients that will be seeing the illustration will be from all over the world and wont know about the huge puddle in staines or get the gag 'STANWELL...BACK'.

Sometimes the simple idea is the best to go for.... so I just imagined Moses just standing in the rain and then the rain splitting.... nice and simple... Small Miracles and all that.

After a bunch of extra graphics and a few 100 raindrops were added with some reflections and simple puddles it was all done.

Sending to the Agent tonight together with a reworked Gordon Brown illustration I created from the one I posted in my political entry this morning.

Here is the final illustration after a couple of hours reworking.

Click the image to enlarge

Hopefully it will go down well at the convention with the rest of my stuff. It's simple but effective I feel.

Wish I got paid for this full time !! sigh

::RANDOM FACT::

The first thing to ever stick in my head was a fork when I was about 3 years old at Christmas.... Honestly I cant remember a THING before that!!!