Just for fun!

Another self initiated illustration, my take on a poster for the film Drive.  Rendered in pen and ink this illustration was just for a bit of fun and a little diversion from my usual projects I hope you likely.

The rough-work below shows the development of the image, I've taken three images to show though their was lots of other bits an pieces to work on to flesh the illustration out.  

A series of sketches showing the  poster development.

Finished poster!

Visit my website to see more.

Or follow me on Facebook.

Self Initiated Work

Self initiated projects are an opportunity to draw something I do not normally get commissioned to do.  It’s good to fill gaps in my portfolio and expand the breadth of what you can do as an illustrator.  If its not in the folio a client will not commission you do do something similar, so its important to keep the work fit and healthy by adding new things and trimming the fat.

Their is no reason it has to be a chore it can be fun and you can get to draw things that are interesting.  I love dinosaurs and all things prehistoric from lost lands long ago, I've quite bookshelf on the evolution of life, fossils and lovely glossy picture reference books on the subjects too.  It is a wealth of material for the mind to imagine upon, so I decided to get prehistoric.

The below images show the Tyrannosaurus and horned Triceratops placed in a dummy layout to give them a bit of context. Both pen and ink illustrations are the kind of illustration that I hope is attractive to children’s book publishers.

The line art illustration is created from pencil sketches and then coloured on the computer.  For the Triceratops illustration I worked from the fossil remains shown in books only as a challenge and then put flesh on the bones and skin and patters from reference images of animals that exist today.

The mighty Tyrannosaurus, for this I placed my illustration in  a dummy  page layout  to  give it a little context.

The horned Triceratops in dummy layout.

You can see these images and other commissioned work by visiting my website 

Follow me on Facebook

Recent projects

I’ve been fortunate to work with a great deal of talented people, producing images for advertising Children’s book illustrations, Educational illustrations, Comic book artwork, Storyboard and conceptual art for television, web, client pitch images and even illustrated maps! 

Thorpe Park 2009-Present  Large artwork for the amusement park’s on site map both display and carry fold out version.  The challenge was the fit in all the rides and buildings in a way that you could see the dramatic scale of the main rides and still be used as a functioning map.  The park is always being updated with new rides so the illustration needs to keep up with the new developments. Client LMC Design, London

From project brief to final artwork, I hope to impress and do my best, communicating my ideas discussing with you the most interesting way to turn your brief to an exciting visual. Collaboratively we can develop sketches and I will send those concepts on for your input, to help push the image forward to the final artwork.

My work is all rendered in pen and ink, my line art illustrations have evolved and developed as I’ve improved my craft.  When the ink is dry the final artwork is scanned, colored and tweaked, images can be vectored or saved to the file format you need.

It’s fantastic to see my work in context and I get a great deal of enjoyment seeing it in print.  For over a year on a weekly basis I contributed illustrations for The Guardian Newspapers Saturday edition.  My work has appeared in the London Underground and on Billboard posters in Italy for Piaggio’s urban scooter campaign , Artwork for Aids awareness literature in New York for HB4 Chelsea and recently an illustrated story, The Girl With Green Eyes for Oxford University Press aimed at an older readership to name but a few examples. 

The Girl With Green Eyes, 2011 For Oxford University Press’s Bookworms series, the above shows two images taken from the main location of the book, seven images in total featured this setting.  The challenge was to show the main characters in the same place but from different angles to keep the visuals interesting.

Recently I was fortunate to work on a project for the Northern Ireland Chamber Of Commerce (NICC), producing illustrations for their 230^th Anniversary brochure.  The brief required me to research on the developments in science, business and industry in Northern Ireland over the past 230 years to render interesting visuals to sit with and compliment the brochure’s copy.

Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce Interior artworks (NICC) 2012 A selection of interior artwork for the NICC 230 brochure, expanding on the history and innovation the Chamber has passed through and helped influence.  Interior artwork needed to blend around the copy hence the rough edges and sat on the page couter edges.  Brochure Design by Pink Inc, Belfast.

Double page art for the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce (NICC), 2012  Interior cover imaged for the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce’s 230 brochure.  The artwork was to show the progression of Belfast from NICC’s foundation 230 years ago to present day.

Please get in touch if you would like to find out more, 

visit http://www.dylangibsonillustration.co.uk

Breakdown of an Illustration

I thought I’d write a little about how I would go through the process of illustrating an image in a step by step way including some of the rough work concepts and developmental sketches.

The following artwork is for a self initiated project to draw the cover artwork for Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.  First up is my initial idea, rendered in pencil the rough shows the basic composition of the cover, back cover on the left hand side and front on the right.  My idea for the cover was to create a montage of imagery of Darwin and some of the subjects associated with his theory laid down in his book, The HMS Beagle, Finches, Darwin’s study and the Galapagos tortoise.

This concept was sketched down to quickly capture down on paper my montage idea It includes a youthful and older versions of Darwin.

Above I've further developed the image giving it more detail in an effort to see how more finished looking elements work together.  I've added in some stylized waves swirling around the main montage.

 Added clouds in around the edges to fill in the space. These can be knocked back in the final art so not to interfere with the type.

Here colour is added, I wanted to do the final in hues of blue, my choice of blue to use needs further thought.

Here I’ve done a more finished image of the central composition of the illustration.  This is done in pen and ink and I’ve shaded it in a cross hatched way to see how it might look as a variation.  I’ve also added the “Darwin’s Finches” in a way to highlight the changes in their beaks.

The older Darwin here, illustrated in a simpler style without cross hatch shading, as the colour I will add will add the shading I need.  I wanted to develop his likeness more and have singled him out in order to work on his features more.

The finished image, I’ve drawn all the elements separately and added them together in a layered file so I can move them around and change colours more easily.  

Visit my Facebook page for up to date news here http://www.facebook.com Dylan-Gibson-Illustration

Check out my website to see more of my illustrations http://www.dylangibsonillustration.co.uk/

A Matter of Perspective

As an illustrator I find it important to get an impression of depth and movement in my artwork using perspective.  In the context of vision and how we view the world and the objects around us it is the way things appear to the eye based on their positions and sizes. Close things appear bigger in relation to the same object placed further away.  As objects become more distant they appear smaller due to the decrease in the objects visual angle.  A good example of this is a road or parallel rain tracks they appeal to meet at a distant point, referred to as the vanishing point, this point is called the horizon line or geometric horizon at the level of the viewer’s eyes.  While typing this I was suddenly struck by a memory of a sunny afternoon in my school art classroom, where it was first explained to me.  I’m sure most people can remember doodling the horizon lines and box houses vanishing into the distance similar to the example of the vanishing road or track.

Going, going, gone, this image is a classic example of perspective with one vanishing point.

It is understood that the Greeks were not the first to appreciate perspective when scholars wondered for example why a hand seemed to change size when it moves the honor goes to a fellow called Alhazen a mathematician who lived over a thousand years ago he realized that the cone of rays or light reflected of the hand grows narrower when moved away and larger when closer.  A much more recent and jokey way of looking at this perception was the scene in Father Ted when Ted bored and stuck in a caravan with Dougal tries to explain the difference between a small toy cow and the real ones further away outside the window.  “Ok one last time! These ones are small but those ones are far way.  Small…far away”.

The practice of using perspective was dusted off after largely being forgotten, resurrected in Florence, developed by renaissance artists, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci (not the Teenage turtles characters)  They developed their craft using multiple vanishing points to build up a three dimensional image on a flat canvas.   The rediscovered science of perspective  created a lot of excitement in the art world the marriage of the image and mathematics revived the composition of an artwork the new aim to not only make figures lifelike but to create a sense of movement of people in the space around them.  The practitioners had moved away from the artist as a recorder of an event to capturing the movement of the scene.  Creating grids on a canvas to precisely create the perspective of the 3D world, objects would be drawn out before painted in a wire frame way.  The same way that today’s computer artists build the characters and settings in computer animation or CGI.

Leonardo da Vinci's Study for the Adoration of the Magi, note the perspective lines and vanishing points.

Paleo Uccello and his Perspective Study of a Chalice created circa 1450.   A wire frame drawing  similar to the  way  a computer artist creates a wire frame model in which to paint and add detail to.

Once you get the hang of perspective and can figure out the logic behind how it works it you can do it more intuitively when sketching out an image.  As with anything one you nail down the basics of it you can have fun with it and distort it in what’s called forced perspective.  You can affect the appearance of things in a drawing, exaggerating the size of something to appear bigger or smaller than it actually is.   This is something I like to get into my images whether it’s in children’s illustrations or for publishing and advertising artworks.  The trick is to fool the eye and draw attention to certain details, helpful in my educational artworks as there is a small artwork space to work with and you might need a character hold something and see what it is but also include the detail of a room and people behind him.  So I would use this distortion effect to pull out this person and distort the size of the hand and the object to appeal closer up.  Seeing is believing, you have to get this just right or the brain will recognize the fakery and disengage from the image.

In Parkour I've shown an aerial view with the city sprawling off into the distance.

This distortion is used to amazing effect in Leon Keer’s art he produces street images on flat surfaces such as paths or sidewalks.  Drawn in chalk and then coloured, wonderful 3D images when viewed in the right position appear to leap out at you from their flat surroundings.  From standing at another position they appear smudged or distorted and the illusion is gone.  Using the same techniques as the early practitioners in Renaissance Italy, Leon and his contempories create these incredible visual feasts.

Going up! Leon Keer and one of his creations.

My math’s teacher always bemoaned my lack of ability in class I like to think that my understanding the art of perspective and putting it into practice I’m solving mathematical problems every day.

A little help refresh those memories of lessons can be found in this how to guide. http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-Perspective

Or a good reference for kids is How to Draw Comics “Marvel” Way by Stan Lee.  I still have my own aged and well thumbed through copy on my book shelves

.

If you would like to read a little more about this try The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski a great book that covers art and mathematics and the development of the human mind and scientific progress.

Dylan Gibson Illustration

“Hi Don, good morning, pleasure to meet you”.

It was a pleasant greeting from my first prospective client, though considering my name is Dylan, not the best of introductions. During the firm and lengthy handshake that followed I tried to correct the error, he dropped his hand to his side and retorted “Well that’s what it says in my diary” It was an awkward moment, I was eager to make a good first impression and show my illustration portfolio.

I’m a freelance illustrator based in the UK specialising in pen and ink artwork. Originally from Northern Ireland and now based in Scotland, I have been self employed for over ten years. I enjoy what I do and I’ve been lucky enough to turn something I’m good at into a job.

I've been fortunate to work with some of the leading design, media and publishing houses across the UK and further afield.  Previous projects have included: artwork for advertising, books and book covers, character design, comics, conceptual art, educational publishing, newspaper and magazine feature artwork and covers, storyboards and narrative work for television and animated shorts.

I’m used to visualizing my thoughts and ideas on paper, putting them into words in this blog presents a new challenge, one I hope will be interesting for the reader.  I hope to talk about what I do, give you details on how I compose an illustration, my influences, share my experiences and hopefully offer advice to  those interested in art or hoping to start off in a similar career. 

 After convincing the client of my identity, my first meeting went well; we had a joke about it and laughed.  As this is my first post  I hope to get things off to a good start.

Thanks for visiting,

Dylan Gibson 

Dylan Gibson Illustration