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.
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| The mighty Tyrannosaurus, for this I placed my illustration in a dummy page layout to give it a little context. |
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| The horned Triceratops in dummy layout. |
You can see these images and other commissioned work by visiting my website
