Monday, July 27, 2009

Produce and Production or two brains at play

Back to illustrating...

Funny how I need to come at a project. Call it a weak ego, but I needed to start with my best skill and then work my way down to my weakest. So faced with Carly's wonderful pro-lust-pro-vegitarian poems, what did I do first?

1. Research! Tons of web images as well as a trip to the local produce aisles with my camera.
2. I designed the book, set the type, picked a trim size, and contemplated 60s diner-style retro fonts and finally chose a fun display face for the cover and poem titles.
3. Did rough pencil thumbnail drawings for 2 poems. Got better ideas, did roughs for the deeper, wilder, unexpected concepts.
4. Redrew the roughs to size in my typical "art students league life drawing sketch" style.
5. Redo the drawings in a breezy seemingly effortless mod pen and ink style.

I am now stuck between items 4 and 5. It is clear to me that it takes many attempts and failures and much practice to appear loose and spontaneous. Just kill me now.

So I turned to my Madeleine L'Engle project and wrote a 1,500 word essay. Take that pesky illustrations. I can essay my way out of a paper bag.

1 comment:

Joseph Hayes said...

But breezy and effortless is what you do best!