Singing In The Shower

Its good to have fun at work a distraction is a great way to help clear that mental block when an idea is not popping into you head for a particular job.  Maybe that's why doodling is a good thing for me as an illustrator, during my school and collage days my lined note book were full of sketches in the margin and while a lot were scribbled down due to boredom.  I recall an Art College lecture on toilet and bathroom furniture in the 17th century that I really went to town with my pen.  I use them now as a way of having fun while dealing with a mental block.

Today I develop these little doodles and ideas into finished images if I like them or if the concept has legs I'll spend a bit of time and develop them.  There are so many people who sketch down these little imaginings on paper to decorated their pages discarding them later with little or no thought of what they are.  Some of these little drawings are little doorways into how a person thinking and processing things and if a little more focused can be shorthand that can convey a response or solution to a particular problem.  

A stick figure can give me enough information to indicated that a client wants a person drawn from a particular standpoint or even a composition a client has in mind.  They are always apologetic for their confessed lack of artistic skill when handing me a stick figure scene or doodle but it has been enough to convey what is on their mind.  In that regard it is a successful means of communication and that is what art is all about.

Its a valuable tool to be able to sketch a quick idea down as sometimes words cannot convey the imagery in a persons head. I myself find it easier to draw an idea down and often keep these little sketches to come back to later.  My scribble is an intuitive reaction to an idea in my head and my natural reaction is to visualize it on paper. I do get surprised and thrilled when people are taken aback by my workings on paper during a meeting pleased to see that I'm processing what the say in drawings like a type of court reporter.   Based on a conversation a brief or some doodles I can storyboard a scenario for an advert or book with a few lines on my pen and that can be enough to get a project rolling.

As visual creatures we gather a lot of information through sight and all this imagery from the mundane to the beautiful, bizarre or scary gets processed in our heads.  It must be frustrating not to be able to pass on your interpretation of the world in a visual way due to self imposed restrictions or if we are told we're not good at it.  Its shouldn't be as black or white as that and you don't need to be great at something to do it.  

For all of us out there and I count myself in that line up being told I couldn't sing never stopped me from singing in the shower or belting out a number at karaoke night the fun is giving it a go.

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Sketch Book

I'd thought I would write briefly about my recent sketches done while away in New York, in my last entry I talked a little about how projects I'd done set there and how my thoughts and ideas about the place had changed since my visit.

We were lucky to have time to get round some of the places we wanted to get to when we were planning, the sites, museums, boat tours and we wanted to get lots of walking done to places you would not get to on a tour or on the tourist map.  Thankfully living where we do in a rural area and with a dog we had correct and very sensible footwear for long hours on our feet!

Your need to move quick to see everything and like any city not if stopped and staying still get in the way of anyone, who in their mission to get somewhere quick will mow you down.   Stopping for a little moment to catch a breath, I was able to sketch a little and quickly get a few things down.

The Intrepid Air and Space Museum

Bloomingdales

Times Square

Staten Island Ferry

The Met Museum

The American Natural History Museum

I've a few more to add soon, to see more of my work visit my portfolio

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Being There

With a new project you get a brief, it is mostly written out in an email or word document with a few reference images in some cases it’s a description over the phone.  Whatever way its delivered the most interesting and exciting part of starting a new illustration is doing a little research.  The art of doing this has radically changed since I started freelancing twelve years ago, where it could start with a visit to a library or going out and doing some sketches.  I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate to much more in how this has evolved, now I and most everyone else go online and Google image the hell out of it.

Then I would brave the rain sit in the quite surround of the library punctuated by the odd cough and the sound of me operating the photocopier , humming,  clicking and churning out the images I would need from books I couldn’t take away with me to  join my rucksack of books I could.  Now I create a wee project folder with another in it for reference images and texts, its cleaner, drier and less time consuming.  More often than not I get what I need from the internet searches, its fantastic for places, especially ones the popular or more tourist visited places of the globe.  Using Google Earth or Street view you can place yourself on a street corner and get a feel for the geography of a place or catching a recognizable building or attraction from a different angle. 

About a year ago I had a book to illustrate for an educational publisher, a storybook called The Girl With Green Eyes. Its narrative set in New York, I got a little flexibility in where I set some of the locations and chose Times Square for the setting of the hotel that featured in the story and location of the café used of key scenes.  I also picked some reference from the East Village area for the residence of the main character to give a balance between the hi-tech Skyscraper part of the city and the older areas.  Around the same time I had another project for an Aids Drug Awareness graphic novel story set in a similar area of architecture to East Village.

The Girl With Green Eyes.

Both these projects required a looking around the net and getting a feel for the areas, the latter project for Aids Drug Awareness the client was based in New York and was very helpful in providing images for the characters which needed to be based on real people and their story.  Having faces to look at really helped in that job as corny as it might sound.   The realities of their lives were etched into their faces, from their stories which detailed some of the darker moments of their lives up until they changed things for the better.  Thankfully I have not experienced such hardship but the connections I made with them through their photos allowed me I think to tell their story better.

Having holidayed recently in New York I would revisit both these projects again and do things differently and it will certainly inform any future work based on my travels there.  Nothing prepares you for that place, years of TV and film set there only heightens the excitement of seeing all that eye candy for real.   Fantasy and the fantastic suddenly become the reality around you, bustling and brimming over with people, traffic and towering over all that buildings so impossibly big and tall.  It’s wonderful, crazy and brilliant like a wondrous Lego city created by an excited bunch of kids driven by egos to build bigger and taller.  Super sized architecture, Like Central Station or The Empire State building with its grand marble reception all the way to the top observation deck with stunning panoramic views of the city, and I’m told six states. 

View from the 86th floor, looking north east towards the Chrysler Building

My wife and I walked from 46^th St to Battery Park taking in the Flatiron building, Soho, Greenwich Village, with a visit to East Houston St, East village for lunch at a proper deli.  Down through China town and Little Italy, Brooklyn Bridge, Wall St, ground zero and arriving at Battery park to jump on the Staten Island ferry  for a sunset cruise and beautiful views of the city and surrounding area.  It takes in a broad range of building styles and New York’s famous melting pot of cultures and is a recommended thing to do given the right footwear.

Its why I would love to tackle a project based there again, I really didn’t cram enough into those frames, they lacked the variety of the actual place and people, I missed the point of it all and didn’t get that down on paper at the time.  There is so much of the world crammed onto that small island of Manhattan something the reference material I’d collected for those projects only hinted at and I’d missed.   From the point of view of my holiday I’m glad as it was an amazing experience one I hope I’ll carry with me and  influence my work until the next time we visit.

If you are going, places to see:

The American Natural History Museum: for the fossil collections

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: For most things there!

The MOMA: if only to see Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

The Intrepid Museum: A museum on an aircraft carrier! That also has the Space Shuttle Enterprise as an exhibit.

30 Rockefeller Plaza: with a nighttime view at the top!

Central Station: for cocktails and to gaze at the fresco on the high above vaulted ceiling

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The Empire State Building: A must see and better early in the morning before the crowds with amazing views at the top.

Also, The Flatiron, The Staten Island Ferry (it’s free!) A harbour tour, a city bus tour, Department stores and shops around Soho and Greenwich Village.  A proper American stack of pancakes, a deli sandwich and pizza in Little Italy!

It was also very distressing to see it so damaged and lives destroyed by the recent hurricane Sandy, I hope the city and the people there can rebuild and move forward again.

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.  

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