The Evolution of an Illustration

Well I'm back from my vacation to the Redwoods of Northern California, and ready to get back to blogging. Here's a few early versions of my illustration for the Portland Mercury, as well as the final product.



As you can see I originally drew the sign breaking, but this added element skewed the message of the piece and the Art Director asked me to redraw it with the sign intact.



I got a little overzealous in this second version and in an effort to create a whole scene threw in a lot of extra elements that ultimately distracted from the point of the illustration. Plus the printed size of the drawing would make it very difficult to see any of these details clearly. I decided to go for something a little simpler.



And here we have the final version. All of the extraneous details have been eliminated and some birds were added to the left corner to balance out the composition. This took me way longer than I would have liked it to, but now that I have the hang of it I think the next one will probably take half the time. Let's just hope there IS a next time!

Portland Mercury in Retrograde

If you live in Portland, make sure to pick up a copy of The Portland Mercury tomorrow, where you'll see an illustration by your truly. It's my first printed illustration by them and I'm hoping the first of many.



This is a concept sketch that I did for the piece right after I got the assignment, so the art director, Scrappers, could see what I had in mind. Stay tuned for the finished version.