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Experimenting with figure shapes and forms.

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I always have two or three projects on the back burner that I dip in and out of between paid assignments. Fifty faces is one of them. Essentially the idea here is just to have fun - no concepts, no point to get across or text to interpret, just fifty different faces. This is the pencil stage, ringing the changes with each one and avoiding repetition as far as possible. Then working them up, A4 size, in different ways - acrylic, pen and ink etc. Working quickly to avoid getting bogged down or bored.

Continuing to make use of remaindered drawings and sketches that would otherwise lie dormant. More to follow!

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Working as an illustrator one of the key parts of the job, if not THE key part of the job, involves drawing in some form or another. Whether that involves simple layout designs, detailed character drawings or loose concept sketches.

Generally speaking the drawing/rough stage is considered preparatory work which leads to a final image. Time was when at the end of a job I'd routinely clear the desk and trash all the bits and pieces of clutter that had preceded the artwork and then move on to the next thing. I've found in recent years though that I've started to keep more and more of this 'process' material and stored it in folders or sleeves. Occasionally I might review this stuff and although much of it feels crude and unformed there is sometimes an indefinable quality which is lost when it has been redrawn, re-worked and refined.

Recently I thought be might be fun to create a new image using some of this raw material so put together a selection of completely unrelated sketches.



Apart from a little re-jigging this is the finished version, in Photoshop, with each of the elements on it's own layer. Wherever possible I've avoided cleaning things up or doing any re-working as that would somehow defeat the object of the exercise. Having said that I have removed some outlines to help unify the whole thing. Click here see the finished piece.



This is the start of sifting through recent sketches. As I usually work on tracing paper I've got loads of little scraps, some done in pencil, inks or brush pen.



Here's most of the finished selection prior to scanning into the computer for compositing and colouring.

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Sometimes it's good to move away from familiar working patterns - to take a sideways step and see what happens. So for this image I had something loosely figurative in mind but rather than focus on anything too representational I just let the lines flow and be suggestive. Similarly I wanted to knock the colour right back, to be calm rather than anything too lively.



Here's how the pencil sketch developed. It was only when I got to the fourth version that I could see how the 'legs' area might work with the rest. At that point I moved I moved into artwork mode and painted in the accompanying background shapes being careful to echo the feel and flow of the lines.

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