First Day Jitters: A Process

It occurs to me at odd hours of the night how much I enjoy process work and how I find it to be relaxing. Don't ask me why, it just does. 

I need to think about something that is not related to my Dungeon Delve piece or my Knights of The Dragon, so I was looking through my work and found this process piece that hasn't been explored yet. So I will post it here now to show you how I think and how I recycle my art.

Stage 1 Thumbnails

First of all....this piece was done in my Editorial Illustration class and was assigned by one of my favorite instructors Rich Kryczka. We were given a few ideas to work with (I can't recall since this was a while ago) and I did a couple of thumbnails in my sketchbook. Obviously I stuck with the one at the top left (I hate it when I pick the first thumbnail I did, which happens a lot more than you would think).

Stage 2 Pencil Rough

Stage two was to clarify that idea a bit. I drew this kinda freaky looking pencil to be approved by Rich before moving onto the final pencil stage. We are given 2 weeks to finish a piece from start to finish in class. 

Stage 3 Pencil Final

I sat down with Rich and was ready to go! One stage that is missing (thought I couldn't count huh?) is the color composition stage. Normally I don't do these as often as I should anymore unless a client request seeing a sample pallet, or I am having issues thinking in terms of color. I xeroxed the pencil above at 20% and did 3-4 color combinations. 

Stage 5 Finished Illustration

Moving along to the finished illustration. During the color stage it was actually pointed out that the tension wasn't coming off the way I wanted, so we changed the backpack's expression to help convey what I was after. I did the final image on arches hot press watercolor paper 140 lbs. Dimensions are 8.5x11 inches, in watercolor, ink, and colored pencils.

Bonus Stage Design Layout

But wait! There's more!!! To show how an illustration like this was intended to be used I found an article online and copied it into a page layout format. While I need to work on placement of type (as in those paragraphs are horrible) it shows how my image works in relation to an actual page layout. I sampled colors from the image to use in the type.  

Bonus Stage Working Type

And made another page to show how I can keep tying things in with color. It was a fun piece to work on and while normally someone else would be creating the page layout it shows that I can, and that this piece could very well fit into something like Family Circle without too much of a problem (but for that type). 

Anyways....wasn't that magical!?!