Brave New World Competition Entires Pt.2

I have previously posted two pieces of artwork I created for the House Of Illustration 'Brave New World' Competition. Below you can see the other two images that went with my full entry. The first is a watercolour showing Linda as she succumbs to a soma induced oblivion. The vast majority of this painting was done in Paynes Grey to maintain a blue cast to the painting. The other image is dominated by Cadmium Red to suggest the red lighting used in the Solidarity Services.

Brave New World Competition Entries

I received an email in the last few days informing me that my entries for the House Of Illustration & Folio Society Competition to illustrate 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley were unsuccessful. You win some, you lose some.

House Of Illustration had over 500 entries, they have picked a top 25 which can be seen on their website here. It's certainly very interesting to browse, the standard is very impressive and most of the illustrations are a mixture of traditional and digital media which is fitting for the story.

Below you can see two of my entries (two more to come). The first is a rough book binding design, created with ink spatters and pencil put together in Photoshop. The bleeding ink in the baby's head is a photograph I took using a full water jug and ink dropper. The second illustration is a watercolour painting based on John's encounter with a reporter.

More Brave New World Progress

I have finished my second illustration for Brave New World but it's probably best not to release the completed artwork until after the competition. However to appease everybody's curiosity, below is a photo of the second illustration in progress which I took last week.

The next image is my tonal study for the final interior illustration. If you have read the book you'll know what is going on here, if you don't know - read the book!

It's time to start painting...

Progress...

Here are a couple of photos just to show you what's on my drawing board at the moment.

The above image is the finished watercolour for my first entry into the Folio Society competition (see previous post)

In the last half an hour I have just prepared the paper for another Brave New World illustration. I'm experimenting with toned paper for this one, achieved with a crimson acrylic wash.

Tonal Study For Brave New World

I used to do tonal studies in charcoal but recently I've been experimenting in photoshop to get the same results, sometimes better.

First off I work up a detailed rough in pencil as normal and then scan it in. Once I have the image in Photoshop I turn up the levels and ghost the pencil layer. Ghost is a filter effect I found on flaming pear and it has been so useful over the years that I don't know how I managed without it. The Ghost filter means I can paint underneath the pencil image as if it is on a piece of tracing paper. This makes it incredibly easy to fill the image with a mid grey and then add highlights and shadows just like a charcoal drawing on toned paper and as an extra bonus the original line-work is always available on a separate layer.

 

The end result is so useful when it comes to keeping control of values on the final painting. However I can't take all the credit because I got the idea for this process after viewing this post by Dan Dos Santos.

Brave New World Roughs

The Folio Society is running a competition to illustrate 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley. Click here for more details.

Above you can see the roughs, drawn without reference, for the three scenes I have chosen to illustrate. Previously I had worked up a number of thumbnails before selecting which composition I would like to take forward. Now I have to take photo reference based on these roughs and then develop detailed roughs for each.