Getting the Gist Pt 3

Creating the Illustration

After the research stage I was finally ready to commit to this design, however, my initial sketches bought some serious frustration. I this vision in my head and everything at first I was sketching was so far from it, was I under the pressure of drawing in my main sketchbook ? was my anime style too deeply rooted and influencing me unintentionally ?

So spent a bit of time getting inspired by the pininterest board I created, I knew I had to “step away” give myself a bit of breathing space, give myself reflection and maybe just allow myself to be more me. So I opened my personal sketchbook and so I just doodled a bit.

I didn’t do much in my personal sketchbook (see above) I found myself looser and willing to face this challenge again. Yes, I found I wasn’t heading in the direction I desired still, so I thought I would work on technique and see if that would help me face the style issue a bit later on.

So on a piece of paper, I planned to do something similar to what I did with the bunnies in exercise 1 to explore and try different methods to see I find what I’m seeking for this piece.
I drew a very simplified version of how I normally draw for fun and then I inked, Oh! the moment realization hit that my drawings wasn’t the issue after all, I really needed to ink them to get even close to the desired look, suppose it makes a lot of sense as it all about the line weight!
I was never going to find this look with thin pencil lines.

I now needed to explore more with mediums, method and techniques and
I face problem is how to reflect the word from editorial in this piece, one thing I’ve noticed is beauty illustrations tend to be quite direct and straightforward in the illustrations, they do not seem to be big on the deeper meanings. Almost same way the advertisement work in the magazine, direct to showcase products that writing about or promoting.

I had came up with a few options how to portray this

• Girl with gold being poured on her face
• Girl slashing her face with gold
• Girl bathing in gold / Cleopatra style
• Different ways of having/wearing a face mask made out of cash.
• Hands holding the cream
• Girl putting gold on her face

While the desire is there to create something very complex to show case what I can offer, realistically feel a very direct approach is needed and I think ideas I should explore most at this stage is a girl putting gold on her face and hands holding the cream.
One thing I’m also aware of is that this cannot be too comical because I have to be aware that client reading “ELLE” could be the type to spend £1000 on face cream, so I need to keep a unbiased ground in the illustration.

With this in mind I narrowed down my list to Gold and skin care. Keep in mind class and elegance that vibe I associate Elle with. I should point out when I did try to add stars and glitter into design I felt I took it in a too cute direction which may be more younger teen girls and even pre-teen area, something like seventeen or cosmogirl clientele.

I really wasn’t sure at this stage what direction my sketching was going, I liked the the line weight portraits but how to link to editorial had me a little clueless. To much detail made the image too heavy, too anime… I was about to give up on the idea when I was looking at my sketches and next to me was a black and white posca pen, so I though why not try black with white lines.
While this was a pure experiment it fueled another idea, I had some gold gouache to create a gold background, would this give me what I was looking for?

As you can see in my sketchbook pages I was liking this idea, keeping simple lines while the gold colour was giving me my something unique and different. I’m also wary I do not know how the artwork will scan, I did while working in sketchbook took some photos and while shining a daylight lamp at an angle get the shine in the metallic colours. So if does not scan well I could always take a photo to edit digitally.

I’m worried about transferring the look digitally, I do have the option to take a picture of this, this is personally a method I would like to avoid.
One being only have my mobile cam with easy access, I do own a canon 1000D however I have a small issue with using that option (missing memory card and charger), plus even with more detail there is all the issue I find working on photos such a the glare, lost in some organic details such as texture and some parts can be blurry, while, yes, all these can be fixed in photoshop I think it can throw the artwork off, it ends up looking a little more digital/air brush than a small touch up.
I’ve taken some pictures of the gold in both sketchbook and final piece, if anything makes a decent texture. I also have the option to maybe look at lifting the scanned lines digitally and placing on the photo of the gold.

As you can see in my sketchbook I still wasn’t sure of the poses/faces so I kept working on a little bit longer. In the end liking the pose and look that is almost an advertisement placement, thinking it is a suitable for something very ad based magazine that likes to showcase products.

I started work on the final piece, opting for the same paper as the last, 300gsm/140lb cold pressed (not) winsor & newton water colour paper. main reason for this paper choice I felt textures may make scanned version catch the light better than smooth/hot pressed would.
I was also being very brave and would be inking directly with no rough lines, as I wanted line weight within the flow of the ink and didn’t want to risk lifting the gold if had to erase the lines.

After allowing the gouache to dry, I set to work, I admit there was a couple of shaky lines, I also found it easier to get the details better working on a larger size than the ones I created in sketchbook.
I found with just black and gold the image didn’t make the image pop as much as would liked, so added white and a tiny pop of the red lips for more contrast and hopefully make the piece more interesting and eye catching.
I used my all time favioture black ink DR PH martin Black Star – HICARB, Arteza metallic gouache and POSCA white marker.

Once was nearly dry, yes I was a little impatient and small dot wasn’t dry, which lucky didn’t affect the scanned version just the actual picture may need a touch up. Yes! I know, a complete rookie mistake.

So time to scan in, I know I needed to play around with the setting to get the colour to scan in the best.

I’m bearing in mind that this image is likely a spot in the editorial , so I’m picking out of the line up at a distance the one that is most clear and eye catching.
I’m thinking number 5, seems a sharper contrast.

first I needed to lift this on the background, so can create later as a PNG file with no background and to give a sharper contest between image and background by removing the negative space paper texture.

The lines had a peel on them which can see on the the scanned copy, I first I liked it as added a rustic charm. However it looked messy zoomed in and in reality I wanted this more clean cut. So I improved the quality of the lines.
I spent the time cleaning some small mistakes with both brush tool and healing tool, healing tool was very handy so I didn’t lose the textures while cleaning the line edges, I also copied the layer and lightly used dodge tool just to add a little highlight and different tone to the background.
Finally making sure I have file mode as CMYK and I used filter > highpass and changed the layer mode to soft light. This was a very useful tip I learnt a while back that makes work more print ready by making a little bit more sharper.

I like it, but as large and maybe not how I envisioned doing an editorials, would this work? Only one way to know for sure, I opened Indesign and copied the editorial layout the best I could quickly and added the image.

I like it in the mock up, to me honestly does not feel out of place. Me being me always will feel like I can do better or look at how can do this differently.
Reality I feel is it looks right, I do not feel it is out of place for the client, it fits the text.
PLUS if ignore the fact I did it, I would think that this was a nice editorial illustration.

Let put it this way.
“I created an image about spending a lot of money on a face cream” Which would be pretty much the brief.

However it isn’t perfect, it is worth taking note that cannot really read the word RENT on the “price tag” and I’m not completely happy with the white on the head towel, could I have done that more loose or line weight marks like that of the line work?
Also I’m aware that in the same breath as above saying this conflicts with what I’ve just written, I need to be less harsh on myself, more so at the beginning as this

Next I will quickly follow with a summary of this exercise.

More very soon…