Illustration journal 1

After finishing up my Utah temple series, I thought it would be fun to do an ongoing journal/tutorial of illustration work I'm doing. The following is an illustration I'm doing for my wife that I plan to print to canvas and frame.

1- Photos and compositing
First step I took was to have a little photo-shoot with my son. This can be difficult, as he was 1yr old when I took the photos. I use a Digital SLR with a nice macro lens. With little children it is highly recommended that you use a fast shutter speed, as they are constantly in motion.
I took two of the photos I liked the most and composited them together on a canvas 11x14 inches, 300dpi in size. I desaturated the photos and created a 50 to 60% gray layer in the background. I'm creating this in Black and white because when I illustrate this I'll be illustrating in Black and White. Then I'll use additional layers with layer modes later to create the color for this illustration. After compositing and adjusting the image in Black and White the way I wanted I printed this out.



2- Drawing in the real world
Using the composited photo as a source I sketched the head and body shot of my son onto two separate sheets of paper using a graphite pencil. I like to begin my projects in a traditional way. Highly detailed sketches done outside of the computer add a whole other level of art to my illustration when I do the final rendering in the computer. Once completed I scanned these into the computer. In Gimp I increased the contrast of the lines using levels, and composited the two sketches together like so:


3-Set up your illustration space in Gimp
I changed the layer mode on both sketches to 'Multiply'. In this mode the White areas of the sketches become transparent and the dark lines remain opaque. Then I created a new layer under the sketch layers. When I paint in Gimp the underlying layer will show through everywhere except the dark lines. This will give my illustration a nice artsy feel to it.

4-Painting the values
Now the fun part. I've begun on the face of my son to the right. I'm using my pen tablet. I put down a solid color that is the dominant value based off the photo and begin working in different values. I'm using a brush I created which was meant for cloud affects in my temple series. But seems to have a very nice painterly affect here. (Sorry I learned the word "painterly' from my Drawing-2 teacher in college. Never thought I would use it... Whadaya do?) As you can see I have a lot to work on. But you can see how the underlying layer works with the upper sketched layers set to 'multiply'. I really like this affect.
As I go along I'm finding how "off" I was on the hand draw sketches. In the future I'll try to be more exact when I sketch. If tracing is not below your standards (It is for me most of the time) I recommend using tracing paper over the photo to create the initial sketch.


I'll try to keep this journal updated more often from here on out. I'll create a new blog entry for every session I have