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.