Vector Illustrations from My Portfolio

Here are some illustrations done directly in vector format using Adobe Illustrator.  These images had to be converted to bitmap for posting here.

 

Six Years Later...a Music Festival Poster

Suddenly it is six years since my last post on this blog (I have another blog on 2D animation that I post to continually: 162 posts so far. It is called Acme Punched.) But I am still here and as I have been doing more illustration lately, I don't see why I shouldn't reinvigorate this blog by showing what I have done in that department.

Let's begin with a festival poster...

Classic Moonfest 2018

I was commissioned to do this poster by a friend who puts on this annual weekend festival in Quilcene, Washington. She had seen posters I have done for a private chili party that my wife and I put on every October, and she and her partner were excited to have me do one for their event. They had not done an elaborate poster before, and we had some fun getting together and figuring out what it should depict. Here is the tight pencil sketch.

We had decided that all the "people" would be frogs, based on the fact that they had had a frog on a previous promotion.  Right away I was struck with the idea that the Os in Moonfest could be moons, and that they could be casting twin reflections onto the lake at the top of the night landscape. A few things did change or otherwise evolve, but this drawing is basically what I carried out in color and with the text.

Here is the final.

The finished poster.

Previously for digital illustration I have worked mostly in Photoshop, but this was done mostly in Sketchbook.  Sketchbook has some drawing tools that I like, including an interesting range of brushes. As for text, I believe that Photoshop is king, so I worked back and forth between the two programs, using the tiff format. I did find that Sketchbook could not handle text outlines or strokes and other such things created in Photoshop, so I learned to add any fancy text at the end of the process in Photoshop. My client was pleased and they are looking forward to their event, which is to happen in August.

Illustration Friday: Fluid

 

Here is my fourth piece done for Illustration Friday.  A tight linear pencil drawing scanned in and then digitally colored in Photoshop.  About 6 hours work.

 

 

 

The tight pencil drawing.

The rough in red and blue pencil.

Illustration Friday: Twirl

A strange man twirls his moustaches...

Illustration Friday: Grounded

Final Painting

Click to see larger view.

Here is the final, except for the addition of text elements.

Click to see larger view.

And here it is with all of that in place at last.  The text was done in Adobe Illustrator and imported as jpgs into Photoshop, each block of type as a separate layer for maximum adjustibility.

This will no doubt be the final post for 2011.  For January I have planned some posts about my collection of cartoon self-portraits through the years and other fun stuff.

Happy New Year!

The Leering Man

I had a lot of trouble with the third guy in line, namely that he appeared to be leering at the gal in front of him.

This might be appropriate to a pulp fiction story, but he was intended to be just lusting after chili like the rest of them.  But no matter how I worked over it, trying to control his eye direction and everything, the strong impression remained that he was thinking about young women, not chili.

The original pencil sketch was somehow not so obviously lecherous.  As intended, this guy is just crazed with chili envy, or so it seems to me.  But I couldn't seem to translate this into color.

My solution?  I changed him into this: a man with a pathetic look, rather like the preacher from the HBO series Deadwood.  But at least the girl is out of danger!

Next:  Getting To The Final